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Newsletter of the Universal Availability of Publications (UAP) Core Programme
November 1999, Number 28
Welcome to the new Secretary General
UAP staff are delighted to welcome Ross Shimmon as IFLA's new Secretary General. The Office has enjoyed a close association with him during his time with the Library Association and we all look forward to working with him in the future.
Statistics of International Lending
For some years the IFLA Office for International Lending has organised the collection of statistics on international lending, as recommended by IFLA's Section on Document Delivery and Interlending.
However, at the recent IFLA Conference held in Bangkok the question of whether to continue collecting these statistics was put to the Standing Committee of the Section. This Office felt that the statistics no longer served any useful purpose and the Committee fully supported the recommendation to discontinue their collection.
The International Lending Principles and Guidelines for Procedure (1978, Revised 1987) will be revised to delete the requirement to provide these statistics but, meanwhile, questionnaires requesting them for the year from January to December 1998 will not be sent out.
IFLA Guidelines for sending ILL requests by E-mail
The Office has published new guidelines for libraries which send international ILL requests by email.
Research suggests that email is increasingly being used as a standard format for sending ILL requests between countries. Often this means that some sort of structured messaging system, such as the Canadian AVISO system, or the British Library Document Supply Centre's ARTemail system is used, or that messages are sent using a system which conforms to the ISO ILL Protocol Standard (ISO 10160 and ISO 10161), where requests have to be structured according to the rules laid down by the standard itself. However, ordinary freeform email messages where all the elements of the request are given in the body of the email message are also widely sent and it is for this type of email ILL requests that these guidelines have been developed.
These new international guidelines are designed to be used in conjunction with any national guidelines already in existence, and in practice will take account of any agreed procedures already in place between co-operating libraries. The document consists of the guidelines themselves, some examples, and a bibliography of existing national guidelines and related documents. The guidelines can be found at:
http://www.ifla.org/VI/2/p3/g-ill.htm, and will also soon be available as a printed leaflet.
New project planned
An application has recently been made to IFLA's Professional Board for a project to develop a web-based directory of electronic contents services and full-text article suppliers. The aim of the project would be to provide a 'one-stop shop' of such services, in order to allow library staff to make informed decisions when selecting to use a service. The directory would of course have links to the sites of the service providers themselves, and would be developed jointly by UAP and the IFLA Section on Serials.
SEDODEL (Secure Document Delivery for blind and partially sighted people), sponsored by the European Commission, aims to develop and implement a secure document delivery system that can be used by VIPs (visually impaired people).
In the May 1999 issue (number 27) of UAP Newsletter it was announced that the integration phase had just begun. The three components (the Document Transformation System, the Document Reader System and the Electronic Rights Management System)have now been successfully integrated and testing has begun. Early reports have shown no major problems and the project should have a fully operational system ready for the end of the project in March 2000.
A paper about SEDODEL was presented at the Libraries Without Walls 3 Conference (See Conference Reports).
Information about the progress of the project can be found at:
http://www.arttic.com/projects/sedodel/
World Directory of Union Catalogues
The IFLA World Directory of National Union Catalogues is now available on IFLANET at:
http://www.ifla.org/VI/2/duc/
The Directory is a complete listing of all known current national union catalogues, including monograph, serial and general union catalogues. For the catalogues to be included they must be both national (or international) and current. Closed catalogues and regional or local catalogues are not listed but specific subject catalogues are. Catalogues are listed even where there is no public access, although contact details are always provided. For catalogues which are available on the internet, a 'hot-link' is included for direct access.
In order to keep the directory up to date and make it as comprehensive as possible we need to regularly amend any incorrect records and add any new catalogues. The last amendments were made in May 1999. Any new records or amendments of existing records should be sent by email to Richard Ebdon.
IFLA/UNESCO Survey on Digitisation and Preservation
 
IFLA UAP and IFLA PAC (Preservation and Conservation) have been working together in the field of digitised library collections of cultural heritage material. The project, which is being carried out in the framework of UNESCO's Memory of the World programme, has three strands: a survey of current library activity in the area of digitisation of cultural heritage material; the development of a website from which all digitised library collections of national significance will be linked, forming a 'virtual library' of digitised cultural heritage; and a report on digital preservation.
The survey has now been completed, and the published results will soon be available on the UNESCO website. In the meantime, print copies of the report are available, free of charge, from Richard Ebdon.
We are now developing the website which will act as the focal point for digitised library collections which have major cultural importance either nationally or internationally. Records are being created which link directly to the websites of the collections themselves, and we are keen to hear from those of you who are responsible for digitised cultural heritage collections which might be suitable for adding to the Directory. The site is currently under development and therefore not publicly accessible, but it will eventually be available via the UNESCO website. Further information about the project can be found at:
http://www.ifla.org/VI/2/p1/miscel.htm
Election of officers in document delivery
During the 1999 IFLA General Conference, held in Bangkok from 20 - 28 August, elections were held for the posts of secretary and chair for each of IFLA's 34 sections. The UAP Office has close links with the Section on Document Delivery and Interlending (DDIL), and we are pleased to report that the current Chair and Secretary of that Section were both re-elected: Agneta Lindh, from BIBSAM at the Royal Library, Stockholm, and Chris Wright, Chief, Loan Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, will both serve for a further two years. In addition, Mary Jackson was elected as Treasurer of the Section, and will assist the Chair and Secretary in their duties, especially during the later part of their final period of office. Chris Wright was also elected to the IFLA Professional Board as representative for Division V, the Division to which the Section on DDIL belongs.
UAP across the world
The Office has recently held UAP Seminars in Bangkok and in Buenos Aires, which have provided an opportunity for library staff in South East Asia and in Latin America respectively to discuss the state of library development in the region, and to identify ways in which access to published materials can be improved. As well as looking at document delivery systems and resource-sharing opportunities, the seminars also examined the state of publishing and library provision in all of the countries represented.
The Bangkok Seminar was the second to be held in that region, and was organised as a follow-up to the first, From Palm Leaves to PCs held in 1995, giving participants the chance to study what, if any, progress had been made since the first seminar.
The workshop in Buenos Aires was largely funded by NCLIS, and hosted by the Argentinean Library Association. Papers presented described the situation in eleven countries, including publishing, library provision, ILL and cataloguing. It is hoped to follow this up with a further seminar in Lima in two years time to measure progress (as was done with From Palm Leaves to PCs).
Libraries Without Walls 3,
Lesvos, Greece
10-13 September
Richard and Judy attended the conference to give a presentation on the SEDODEL Project. The theme of the conference was distance learning and the effect on remote document supply.
The conference proper started on Saturday morning with a keynote address by Sandy Slade from the University of Victoria. He explained that the absence of agreed definitions of distance learning and remote document supply indicated how dynamic the area was. The development of ICT had had a great impact on the development of distance learning. The commitment of Governments to lifelong learning means that this trend will continue. Although distance learning has meant that access to learning has increased he was also aware of the danger that the gap between information rich and information poor could increase as access to the Internet and the latest equipment becomes essential.
Other papers dealt with the principles of web design for fully sighted and visually impaired readers, and with electronic document delivery services. It appears that although there are quite a few electronic document delivery services available they do not yet have the coverage of titles to be able to compete with traditional document delivery services.
During his summing up Peter Brophy from CERLIM raised some topics for further discussion. These included:
- Studying the effectiveness of distance education options
- Proving the effectiveness of electronic libraries (we are still very much in a 'gee whiz' phase)
- Studying the needs and skills of users. Finding out how they study, what they want and making sure they have the necessary skills.
- Guidelines and standards are essential to ensure good practice
- And we should be keeping an eye out for what will replace the Web as the new best thing.
A copy of the SEDODEL paper and following discussion is available from Richard Ebdon.
Empowering Society Through The Global Flow of Information
This was the title of the 6th. Interlending & Document Supply International Conference held in October 1999. Some 180 delegates from 25 countries spent three intensive days discussing the role of document supply in its widest sense in the empowerment of society in an international context.
It became clear that, since the first conference in 1988, although many things have changed many others remain much the same. Participants soon learned that there are some things which cannot be changed and others than can and they need to acquire the wisdom to know the difference! Many speakers and delegates raised the issues of infrastructure and finance as basic elements in the struggle to improve document supply both nationally and internationally.
These provocative and challenging discussions took place within the context of the jacarander-festooned city of Pretoria which also provided outstanding hospitality in a variety of social events, all of which were designed to improve networking possibilities and which amply achieved that goal. This was the sixth in what has become a permanent fixture in the library and information calendar. The next will be in 2001 - but where? Volunteers to be considered as the host are welcome!
The full proceedings of the conference will be published next year - please contact Richard Ebdon if you wish to be notified as soon as the publication is available.
The Right to Read:
Visually Impaired Readers and the Rights Holders (working title)
1 March 2000,
Amsterdam, Netherlands
The conference being held by the SEDODEL Consortium with support from the IFLA Section on Libraries for the Blind will deal with the problems encountered by visually impaired people in accessing information.
New technology has changed the ways and has improved the ease with which VIPs access information. However, current copyright laws often inadvertently prevent VIPs having equal access to information as their fully sighted counterparts. The conference will deal with the copyright issues, the problems encountered by VIPs, and discuss various solutions such as the SEDODEL system. It will provide the opportunity for delegates which will include rights holders to hear the other side and find a way forward which will respect the principles of copyright whilst breaking down the barriers that VIPs currently face. Further information available from Pauline Connolly.
New Publication
from the IFLA Office at Boston Spa
Solving Collection Problems through Repository Strategies
Proceedings of an International Conference held in Kuopio, Finland
9-11 May 1999
Edited by Pauline Connolly
The purpose of the conference was to discuss one of the main problems facing libraries: how to house printed collections, at what cost, what kind of repository and co-operative solutions exist and what are the benefits of these solutions. The papers presented covered the various approaches to repository libraries, outlining different models and their importance as part of national/regional networks. The role of repository libraries in providing access and availability to library materials, both traditional and electronic, was explored and the conference concluded with discussions on meeting the challenges of the electronic era.
ISBN 0 95 32439 4X PRICE £20.00
A complete list of current publications for sale may be requested from the Office. In addition, the following titles are available free of charge:
- National Libraries of the World: an address list (updated regularly)
- IFLA Fax Guidelines
Director of the UAP Programme and Head of IFLA Office for International Lending
Graham Cornish
Programme Officer
Sara Gould
Research Officers
Judy Watkins, Pauline Connolly and Richard Ebdon
Officer Administrator
Tracy Bentley
The Office is fully linked to the Internet system. All staff can be reached on a general E-mail address:
IFLA@bl.uk
and individual members of the team can be reached by using the formula:
firstname.lastname@bl.uk. The general office telephone number is +44 1937 546124 (which is also the number for Richard Ebdon). Other numbers are:
546123 (Graham Cornish)
546255 (Judy Watkins)
546254 (Sara Gould and Pauline Connolly)
546465 (Tracy Bentley)
The UAP Office has a home page on the WWW at:
http://www.ifla.org/VI/2/uap.htm
The UAP newsletter can be received electronically by contacting Pauline Connolly.
Published by
The IFLA Offices for UAP and International Lending
c/o The British Library
Boston Spa
Wetherby
West Yorkshire LS23 7BQ
U K
Fax: +44 1937 546478
ISSN 0264 - 2441
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