E‐mail discussion lists have become an enormously successful forum for discussion among groups of like‐minded people, and a fair number exist in the field of interlending and document supply. The paper takes a look at those which exist in this area, and highlights the benefits of subscribing to the various types of list such as regional‐based lists, specific product‐focused lists, and general interlending lists. Instructions on how to subscribe to each of the lists mentioned in the article are also given.
This paper aims to describe the transition of EThOS, the British Library's E-Theses Online service, from its original role as a transactional document supply service to the service seen today where it forms part of the UK's network of institutional repositories, open access and still-developing research funder mandates. The constituent parts of the EThOS service are described, and an analysis is given of the development of open access repositories, electronic theses and the way that PhD theses have become an important resource for cutting-edge research content for researchers worldwide. The value of doctoral theses for researchers continues to grow and be recognised. Many UK institutions have moved to mandatory open deposit of electronic theses, and many are digitising their older print thesis collections. Public funders are starting to track open deposit of the theses they fund; and research organisations are analysing the full UK metadata collection to understand trends in PhD research areas.
The IFLA Office for UAP (Universal Availability of Publications) is currently developing a voucher payment scheme which will help to overcome some of the difficulties currently present in paying for interlibrary transactions between libraries in different countries. There is an enormous range of payment methods in operation among libraries, ranging from the formalized (and expensive) prepaid request forms used by some of the major document suppliers, to informal reciprocal arrangements between libraries where charges are waived on the basis of more or less equal volumes of requests.One way in which the IFLA UAP Programme aims to improve access to publications is by breaking down barriers to effective interlending and document supply. Time and again we hear that one of the major difficulties in international ILL is the problem of paying for the transaction [1]. Furthermore, it is not just the requesting libraries which face difficulties but also supplying libraries too often find that it is not cost-effective to make a charge when supplying an item to another library. This article considers the problems which exist in charging for and paying for international interlibrary transactions, looks at current payment methods and presents the IFLA Voucher Scheme as an alternative payment system. Current members of the Voucher Scheme Working Group are listed in the appendix.
The IFLA Office for UPA and International Lending has recently established some guidelines for libraries sending ILL requests by email. The guidelines aim to support document delivery staff who send ILL requests by ordinary free from email messages, where the request details are given in the body of the message. The Guidelines are offered as support for existing national or regional practices, and aim to ensure that requests contain all of the required elements, set out in a standardised format which will help to speed up the processing of such requests.
With shrinking local library resources and the growth of resource sharing, union catalogues, in one form or another, are an important feature in today's library world. This article takes a look at some of the developments in union catalogue production, from card catalogue to virtual union catalogues or clumps, and discusses their use for document access and supply. The IFLA World Directory of National Union Catalogues, a kind of union catalogue of union catalogues, is also described.
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