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UAP Core Programme and the Office for International LendingArchive - Historical Material |
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Annual Report 1998Graham P CornishProgramme Director IntroductionAs always, this has been a busy year for UAP. Involvement in project work has continued to be a major feature of our work although we may be entering a "lean" period as several EU-funded projects have come to an end and a call for new proposals from the EU has not yet been issued; nevertheless the voucher scheme continues to flourish and partnerships with other organisations continue to be established. The Programme has been very successful in diversifying its activities and sources of support and this will be a major thrust in its future development.AdministrationDuring 1998 Sarah Keates left the office for family reasons and her post will not now be filled as the need and funding for it have both disappeared. Richard Ebdon joined the team as a full-time researcher. Restructuring of the staff was completed to everyone's satisfaction. Sponsorship and funding for projects continue to be sought with some success but there is always room for more.ProjectsSurvey on Digitisation and PreservationIn August 1998, questionnaires on digitisation and preservation were sent to over 70 national libraries, in order to gather data on digitisation programmes world-wide. Since then, more questionnaires have been distributed to many more major libraries, archives and cultural institutions, and completed questionnaires are now being received in the Office. Sara attended workshops in Leeds and Luxembourg in connection with the project, and Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff visited the UAP Office in April to begin discussions about the project. Data and information about standards, digitisation processes, key advisory organisations, major publications and ongoing projects have been gathered from a variety of sources, all of which will be incorporated into a major report on our findings, to be published in April 1999.Union cataloguesThe IFLA World Directory of National Union Catalogues was launched in 1998, and is now a permanent feature on IFLANET. The number of visits to the webpage is small but growing, and a major update of all the data will be made early in 1999. In connection with the launch of the Directory, a successful Workshop on Union Catalogues was held during the IFLA Conference. Workshop papers discussed both traditional catalogues and recent developments in distributed catalogues, and all the papers have been published in "Resource Sharing and Information Networks".IFLA Voucher SchemeThe Voucher Scheme has proved to be enormously successful since its implementation in 1995 and continues to go from strength to strength. By the end of 1998 more than 280 libraries from 47 countries were listed as participants. These numbers only take into account those libraries who have either purchased a supply of vouchers or who have expressed their willingness to accept the vouchers in payment for interlibrary loan transactions. In addition, we are aware that many other libraries accept the vouchers and reuse them without informing the Office that they are doing so. A total of 12,500 full and 4000 half vouchers have been sold during the last four years and of these only 1,450 full and 150 half vouchers have been returned for redemption. Consequently, an astounding number of vouchers are at present in circulation.A poster session was held at the ALA Conference in Washington in June 1998 which attracted considerable interest. Although the Voucher Scheme has been widely advertised through many different media this session was the first introduction to it for several of the participants of the conference. Following discussions between OCLC, the Library of Congress and IFLA, an arrangement was established whereby the Library of Congress will accept IFLA vouchers in the usual way, but will have the value of the vouchers reimbursed in the form of OCLC credits. The first transaction of this type has been successfully completed. Following on from this first step towards introducing an electronic payment system we have prepared a discussion paper to consider the feasibility of developing such a system. The paper has been circulated several experts in the field of interlibrary loan and their comments and suggestions are eagerly awaited. IFLA Twinning ProjectSince the Twinning database was set up in 1996 more than 70 libraries have completed questionnaires asking for a suitable library with which to establish a twinning relationship. We have tried to match each one with a library as close as possible to the requirements specified on the questionnaire but, for a variety of reasons, this has not been possible in many cases. A large percentage of the libraries on the database are small public/school libraries from several countries in Africa who have mostly expressed a wish to be twinned with a similar library from a technologically developed country. Unfortunately, there are not enough of this type of library to satisfy the demand. Another of the problems encountered is that, after a suitable match has been identified and the libraries have been introduced, further contact is not always made between the libraries. The main reason for this seems to be the familiar theme - lack of resources. Nevertheless, it is a disappointing outcome to the work that has been carried out by the Office.Work carried out on the project during 1998 in addition to identifying suitable partnerships includes updating, developing and improving the database and preparing a list of unmatched libraries to be entered on IFLANET. Regular notices have been distributed on electronic mailing lists to publicise the Project and a poster session was held at the ALA Conference in Washington. An enormous amount of interest was shown in the project by participants at the conference and further information has been sent to all those who requested it. Published MaterialAn article written by Judy and Sara about the UAP Office was published in "Journal of Librarianship and Information Science", Vol 30, No 3, 1998.Graham Cornish's paper "Universal Availability of Publications and its importance to human development, regeneration and growth." was published in Library Management ,vol. 19 no.8, 1998. For "Interlending & Document Supply" the Office continues to write the Miscellany section, the Bibliography and the Review of recent literature. Sara Gould has been given the journal's award of "Best paper of 1998" for her series of Reviews which have appeared during 1997 and 1998. PublicationsNew titles published during 1998 are: Interlending and Document Supply: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference held in Aarhus, Denmark, August 1997. Edited by Dave Johnson and Sara Gould.Anglophone Africa Seminar on Government Information and Official Publications. Selected papers of the Seminar held at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, December 1994. Edited by M M Moshoeshoe-Chadzingwa. Towards a more Efficient and Effective Interlibrary Lending and Document Delivery in Africa. Proceedings of an IFLA Seminar held in Ghana, April 1996. Edited by Victoria Dodoo and John O Amekuedee. Interlending and Document Delivery in Developing Countries. Brief papers from the Workshop held during the IFLA General Conference in Amsterdam, August 1998. Conferences and meetingsA major conference was organised jointly by the UAP Programme and ASM Associates on the topic of the contribution of libraries to community economic growth. This was held in Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) in June and continued work begun a year earlier at a similar conference in Ljubljana.Other important conferences at which presentations were made included Document Delivery: towards the Year 2000 (London), a British Library/British Council seminar on document delivery in Paris and Research Libraries in Europe conference (Crete). The Programme had a wise variety of activities during the General Conference in Amsterdam including workshops on electronic copyright, document supply in Africa and union catalogues. RepresentationThe administration of a conference held by the Share the Vision project in September was undertaken by staff in the Office. The conference proved to be a huge success and the Trustees expressed their gratitude for all our hard work.At the last Annual General Meeting of the Opportunities in Europe Group it was decided that the Group had outlived its usefulness as information is now readily available on the Internet and from electronic listservs. The Group officially disbanded on 31 December 1998. Graham Cornish also attended the LIBER Annual Conference in Paris on behalf of the Library Association. During 1998 Graham Cornish learned that he had been elected President of the [UK} Library Association for the Year 200 and will serve as President-elect for 1999, giving him a busy schedule. CopyrightAs is now well known, the Programme undertakes a huge amount of work in the realm of copyright law, both because this is a major factor in developing universal availability and also because the Office is a focal point for expertise in this area both in the UK and world-wide.The Office was represented at three significant EBLIDA meetings on copyright in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Rome, concentrating on the European Draft Directive. Numerous teaching and lecturing activities take place in this field which enables the UAP message to be put across at the same time. The Office provides the Secretariat for the Copyright and Other Legal Matters Committee (CLM) and is also represented on the Working Group looking at the future developments of relationships between IFLA and publishers. EU Sponsored ProjectsThe COPEARMS (Co-Ordinating Project for Electronic Authors Rights Management Systems) came to a close at the end of 1998. The aim of the project was to increase availability of electronic documents through encouraging the development of interoperable ERMS (Electronic Rights Management Systems). The main achievements of the UAP Programme were holding a Special Interest Group Meeting in Brussels, promoting the results of the project at the EMMSEC Exhibition and at the TERENA Conference, and the design of a web site.Although the work for the SEDODEL (Secure Document Delivery for Blind and Partially Sighted People) project is officially carried out under the British Library banner, the aims are relevant to UAP. The project began in April and will develop the ERMS designed under the CopySmart Project to make it fully accessible at all levels. It is hoped that the work of the project will increase access to information for visually impaired people. Information about the project is available at http://www.arttic.com/projects/SEDODEL A joint UAP and SEDODEL workshop was held at the IFLA Conference in Amsterdam. Work with visually impaired people was taken further as the Programme provided a member for the Expert User Group of Project TESTLAB,, an EU project to make records of suitable material available to visually-impaired people in a format they can access. Meetings were held in Brussels and Genoa.
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