IN THIS DOCUMENT:

Administration

IFLA Voucher Scheme

Interlending & Document Supply 7th International Conference

Relationship with Emerald publishers

International Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan: Principles and Guidelines for Procedure

Project work

UAP Workshops

UAP Workshops

Office for UAP and International Lending
Annual Report 2001

Archive - Historical Material

Administration

Graham Cornish left the British Library on 21 December 2001, resigning from the position of Director of the UAP Core Programme at the same time.

Neil Holding, our Office Administrator, left the Office in August 2001 to take up a new post within the British Library in London. We carried a vacancy for two months before welcoming Katharine Rennie into the Office as the new Office Administrator on 29 October.

At the end of 2001, the staff consisted of:

• Sara Gould, Programme Officer (50% part-time)
• Pauline Connolly, Research Officer (80% part-time)
• Katharine Rennie, Office Administrator (100%)

IFLA Voucher Scheme

The Voucher Scheme remains as popular as ever, and 15,500 vouchers were sold during 2001. We received 497 separate orders.

Countries with the highest number of separate orders were Italy (80 orders), Spain, USA, France, Canada (28 orders).

The number of vouchers sent in for refund increased to 6,500 in 2001. The countries that sent in the highest number of vouchers for refund were Germany (17 separate redemptions from 10 institutions), USA (9 redemptions from 4 institutions) and Australia (9 redemptions from 1 institution).

By value, the Biblioteca nacional Madrid ($14,944), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ($10,600) and Universita degli studi di Milano ($6000) redeemed the highest number of vouchers.

During 2001, a survey was carried out to gain a better understanding of how the vouchers are used. Results showed that 82% of current users say their use of the Voucher Scheme is growing. Although there is a big demand for an electronic version of the Scheme, most libraries are also very satisfied with the current arrangements, and are unlikely to see a move away from Vouchers as an international ILL payment system within the next five years.

Interlending & Document Supply 7th International Conference

This biennial Conference, always organised jointly by the Office for International Lending and the local organisers, was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia in October 2001, and was considered a resounding success. There were 143 participants from 31 countries. Although the number of delegates was smaller than some of the previous conferences, it was truly international, with representation from Japan, Venezuela, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia to name but a few countries. Previous conferences have always attracted a large number of delegates from the host country (up to 50% of the total number), and the smaller overall number of delegates this year is a reflection of the size of the host country, and its relatively low level of ILL activity.

We enjoyed an excellent relationship with the local organisers, National & University Library, Ljubljana. As they did not have ILL expertise on their organising group, we took the lead on organising the professional programme, speakers, chairs of sessions, session themes etc. We printed the Conference brochure, and will be publishing the proceedings from the Conference very soon.

The venue for the 8th Conference in the series has been agreed (there were three volunteers to host it) but not yet announced. This will take place in October 2003. The Conference is self-funding, supported by the Conference registration fees together with some sponsorship. We were very grateful to all our sponsors for supporting this key event in the international ILL arena.

Relationship with Emerald publishers (formerly MCB University Press)

In 2001, Graham Cornish continued as Editor of the journal Interlending & Document Supply. Pauline Connolly was Assistant Editor of the same journal. Although this arrangement is not part of the work of the Office for UAP and International Lending, it has made a valuable contribution to our funding, while offering a channel for publicity for our IFLA work. Graham Cornish resigned as Editor at the end of 2001, and Emerald are in the process of seeking a replacement. Pauline continues to be Assistant Editor until a new Editor is found, at which point she will cease to be involved.

Emerald has been a regular sponsor of the Interlending & Document Supply International Conference, and has indicated that it wishes this relationship to continue, regardless of the future editorship of the journal or the future role of the British Library in supporting the journal.

We have also had a long-standing commitment to provide regular contributions to the content of the journal, for which we have received additional funding. These contributions consist of the Review of Interlending & Document Supply, a Bibliography of the same subject, and a Miscellany of smaller news items relating to ILL. As the IFLA Office for International Lending, we are ideally placed to carry out this work, but our future contribution will depend on the outcome of discussion currently taking place between the BL and IFLA; the BL and Emerald; and the future of the Office for International Lending itself. Two Reviews, two Bibliographies and four Miscellanies were produced in 2001.

International Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan: Principles and Guidelines for Procedure

The small working group made up of members of the Standing Committee of the Section on Document Delivery & Interlending and the UAP Programme Officer finalised the major revision of these Guidelines, and they were approved by IFLA Professional Board at its March 2001 meeting. The Guidelines have been translated into 5 other languages, and all versions are available on Iflanet. The Guidelines and Principles were launched at a dedicated event during the Boston Conference, and are now being used widely to guide international ILL activity.

Project work

This two-year project started in April 2001 and Graham Cornish carried out some preparatory work, with a view to writing a resource guide on the role of libraries in supporting the use of minority languages in society. The project was due to continue until 2003, but has had to be closed down and the initial funding reimbursed to the European Commission after Graham left the British Library at short notice. Although the project would have provided information on the state of minority language activity in libraries, and the importance of minority languages in ensuring access to published material, it was felt that the UAP Office was not in a position to continue the project, given the huge amount of work remaining and the shortage of staff time.

The UNESCO MEDLIB Project offers a focal point for access to library services in the countries of the Mediterranean region. As part of UNESCO's MEDLIB activity, we were commissioned to carry out research into the state of automation of the major library catalogues of that region. A four-month project identified the major national and union catalogues of each of the 22 Mediterranean countries, and assessed the level of Internet availability for each. Not surprisingly, the level of Internet availability varied enormously between the most technologically developed countries and the least.

A full report on our findings was written and submitted to UNESCO in April 2001, and 500 copies of the report were also submitted. It is not clear whether UNESCO have made progress in their MEDLIB programme as a result of our work.

UAP Workshops

Graham organised and ran two UAP workshops in 2001, one in September held in Buenos Aires for libraries in Latin America, and one held in September in Nouméa, New Caledonia for libraries of the Pacific region. The papers from Nouméa are available at http://www.spc.int/library/UAP%20Workshop/spcuap.htm and the papers from Argentina are available direct from the UAP Office, in print or electronic, in Spanish or English.

CLM Secretariat

The Office continued in its role as the Secretariat for CLM. We produced printed brochures of CLM's two policy documents, the Licensing Principles and the Copyright Statement. We continued to host the closed listserv for CLM members, and to maintain the membership list of CLM members.