Office for UAP and International Lending
Annual Report 2002

Archive - Historical Material

The last year in the life of the Office for UAP & OIL has been one of finalising projects, departing staff and unbundling the complexities of relationships between IFLA, the BL, Emerald publishers and other organisations.

Graham Cornish had left the British Library at the end of 2001 and was not replaced either within the BL or in IFLA. His departure broke the ties between the BL Copyright Office and the IFLA Office, which had always shared accommodation and, often, confusingly, staff and indeed the workload. Judy Watkins and Tracy Bentley moved out of the IFLA Office in January 2002 to form the Copyright Department for the BL in its Operations & Services directorate, building much stronger support for the operational work of the BL.

Although the formal decision to close the UAP Office was not made until August, it had been clear for a long time that the UAP Programme could not continue in its current format. Lack of funding had been an issue for all of the core programmes for many years, and, particularly in the last few years, lack of focus had been a problem for UAP. A consultation visit to the Office in February by a member of the Governing Board concluded that two major pieces of work should be maintained by IFLA, and steps would be taken to bring other areas of work to a conclusion.

The UAP Programme Director had undertaken a large EU project in 2001 investigating the role that libraries should play in supporting the use of minority languages in Europe, and examining how access to minority language publications could be improved. Regrettably, the decision was made in 2002 that the project could not be completed by the remaining staff, and the EU was notified of this decision, and the advance of research funding repaid.

Two of the remaining members of staff were missing for large parts of 2002. Katharine Rennie took maternity leave for 4 months, giving birth to a beautiful daughter, Moira Isabel, in June 2002; and Sara Gould had the opportunity to visit New Zealand from April to July, thanks to her teacher husband's sabbatical break. Although the workload had decreased, these were uncertain months for all of the staff involved, and Katharine and Pauline Connolly should be congratulated for taking on extra duties and coping extremely well at this time. Pauline Connolly had been due to retire in August 2002, but had generously extended her sentence by a few months, remaining in the Office until October, when Katharine returned from maternity leave. Pauline retired on 23 October 2002 after nine years working for IFLA, and her contribution has been invaluable.

The Office has acted as Secretariat to IFLA CLM since the establishment of CLM in 1997. As a result of the UAP closure, the discussion listserv for CLM hosted by the BL has been closed and a new list set up by IFLA HQ, to be managed by the Chair of CLM. Staff continued to carry out secretariat work for CLM during the year, taking the minutes of the business meetings in Glasgow, writing a report of the Glasgow conference, and providing printed brochures relating to CLM's various official documents. Our bank account for CLM was closed in October 2002, and the balance returned to IFLA HQ. The final task for the Office will be to update CLM's Iflanet pages before closing this chapter in its work.

One of the regular features in the calendar of the OIL has been the Interlending & Document Supply International Conference. The 7th in the series was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in October 2001, and the proceedings, edited by Pauline Connolly, were published by OIL in March 2002. A formal decision was made to hand over the care of the Conference series to the DDIL Section Committee, and they have set up a small sub-committee to take care of that task. The 8th ILDS Conference will be held in Canberra, Australia, in October 2003.

The Conference series has always been supported with generous sponsorship by Emerald publishers. This has been part of an arrangement whereby the UAP Office has made regular contributions to the journal Interlending & Document Supply, in return for some funding for our work. For many years, staff have maintained and published a Bibliography of interlending & document supply and a review of the published work in this area. In recent years, Graham Cornish had also been editor of the journal and Pauline assistant editor. With Graham's departure, it was clear that the BL would not wish to continue with this arrangement, and once again, Pauline deserves a special mention for taking on extra responsibilities while Emerald sought a new editor. It was agreed that the OIL would cease all contributions to the journal during 2002. However, it is important to note that Emerald are still enthusiastic about maintaining a relationship with the ILDS Conference.

The final issue of the UAP Newsletter was published in November 2001, and letters were sent to the 900+ libraries on the mailing list informing them that it has ceased publication. A decision has been required on the future of our current publication list. The publications have traditionally been sold for a small sum, bringing a very small income for the Office, but demand for most titles has been too small to consider passing this process over to another part of IFLA. All of our titles, except the proceedings of the last two conferences, have now been declared out of print. Excess stock has been bundled up and sent free of charge to IFLA member libraries in less developed countries and to the IFLA regional offices. We continue to accept orders for the most recent titles, but are now supplying copies for free, so as to clear our list of outstanding invoices before our closure in March.

Consideration has also been given to the future of a number of smaller services run by OIL. The sale of IFLA International Loan/Photocopy Request Forms will continue to be handled by the BL in the short term, but the DDIL SC has been asked to work towards removing this task from the responsibility of the BL by August 2004. The document International Lending and Document Delivery: Principles and Guidelines for Procedure was extensively reviewed in 2001, and the care of these principles will now pass to the DDIL SC.

The IFLA Voucher Scheme for international ILL payments has remained the most successful initiative by the Office in recent years. It has also become, to some extent, a victim of its own success, as it now requires significant staff resources to run it. Numbers of vouchers sold continue to increase, with new libraries still joining the Scheme, and an increasing number of libraries beginning to send back vouchers for redemption. 21,268 full and 7253 half vouchers were sold in 2002, and 8097 full and 1879 half vouchers redeemed. The bank balance stands at approx. $472,000.00. In November 2002, a representative of PWC Auditors visited OIL to carry out a "health check" on the Voucher Scheme, with a view to advising the Governing Board about its future. The GB decided at its December meeting that the Voucher Scheme should be transferred to IFLA HQ, and preparations are currently taking place for the Scheme to move to the Hague by the end of March 2003.

A physical move to a new location at Boston Spa in December was the final disruption in a chaotic year (but one which pushed us into strong decisions about discarding mountains of old files and Clearing-House material. Many large paper-recycling bins were required!) The year began with great uncertainty and not a little anxiety over the personal future for some staff. However it is without doubt that the decision to close the UAP Office is the right one, and the last few months have had a clarity of purpose: to unbundle long-standing and confusing relationships, to identify those elements of work which should continue, and to work towards a successful transfer of the Voucher Scheme to a new home and a tidy closure of the UAP Office.

Sara Gould
February 2003