   
Section on Document Delivery and Interlending
Minutes of the First Standing Committee Meeting
Amsterdam, Saturday, August 15, 1998
Standing committee members present:
Elena Eronina (Russia), Lone Hansen (Denmark), David Kohl (USA), Agneta
Lindh (Sweden), Celine Menil (France), James Neal (USA), Else Nielsen
(Norway), Uwe Schwersky (Germany), Pentti Vattulainen (Finland), Christopher
Wright (USA), Graham Cornish (IFLA/UAP Office), Annsofie Oscarsson
(convener of the Discussion Group on Reference Work). Regrets were received from
Mary Jackson (USA) and Una Gourlay (USA).
Guests:
Peter Lor (South Africa - representing organizers of the 1999 ILDS
Conference in Pretoria) Mounir Khalil (USA- City College of New York)
1. Introductions, approval of agenda and minutes from Beijing conference.
The chair welcomed the members of the committee and guests. After
general introductions the committee reviewed and approved the agenda for the
Amsterdam conference and the minutes from the Beijing conference, both
of which were previously published in the Newsletter. The chair announced
that Judith Greenaway, member from Australia, had resigned.
2. Discussion of a section list serve.
After some discussion it was decided that a mail list maintained by the
secretary would serve the same purpose as a list serve for communicating
simultaneously with all members of the committee. The secretary agreed
to send an updated list to all committee members periodically.
3. Report of the chair (Agneta Lindh).
The chair's report, and subsequent discussion among S/C members, dealt
primarily with business discussed at the Friday meeting of the Division
Coordinating Board.
Membership.
Our Section, with 176 members, continues to be the largest
section in the Division on Collections and Services. However, there is
concern among all sections that relatively few members are supporting
their staff to participate in standing committees, to the point that some
committees do not have enough members to maintain section business.
Discussion:
The members of the S/C agreed that a concerted effort should
be made to encourage organizations to nominate candidates for committee
membership, especially from areas of the world that are not currently
represented on the S/C.
Decision:
The chair and secretary will ask IFLA Headquarters for a
printout of the current section membership and, using this list, they will ask
members of the S/C to recruit new members from organizations where they
may have contacts. This must be done soon because nominations must be
accepted by member organizations/institutions during the fall or winter and
submitted to IFLA Headquarters by March 1.
Speaker stipends and travel.
The C/B discussion began with the request,
from IFLA Headquarters, for sections to communicate with speakers
regarding the requirements for submitting papers in advance. This discussion
evolved into a discussion of speakers in general, and ultimately into questions
about IFLA's rules regarding the payment of travel costs and stipend for
speakers. Several sections expressed irritation at the current IFLA
practice of requiring guest speakers at workshops and programs to pay
one-day registration fees (usually paid by the sponsoring section out of
IFLA funds).
Discussion:
Members agreed that trying to establish an equitable
procedure for determining which speaker could receive financial support and which
could not would be a perilous undertaking. However, it was agreed that
guest speakers should not pay registration fees and it was
counter-productive to require sections to pay back to IFLA this
registration fee. In the case of this conference, the section would have to pay for
two speakers, one from Germany (a last-minute agreement) and one from Ghana
(traveling on a Danida grant).
Decision:
The chair and secretary will press this point through the C/B.
Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE).
The chair reported that IFLA has established a two-year project headed
by two staff supported by the Danish ministry of culture, the city of
Copenhagen, and the Danish librarians' union. The project is not an IFLA
core program but operates under IFLA auspices. The chair is personally
acquainted with both staff members. The C/B members discussed the
possibility of sponsoring a division program in Bangkok or Jerusalem on
"collection management across cultural borders."
Discussion:
While document delivery has not been considered specifically
in freedom-of-information debates, the committee members suggested that
this might be a topic of interest to the FAIFE staff. This led to a
discussion of the section taking part in a program in Bangkok or Jerusalem dealing
with the ability of ILL/DD staff to request and receive culturally sensitive
materials across ethnic or religious boundaries.
Decision:
The chair will contact the FAIFE staff and explore
possibilities for a section or division program in Jerusalem. Continue discussion at
S/C II.
4. Financial report (Chris Wright)
a. Funds for the section's two projects have been disbursed as
shown in the Interim Financial Report published in the Newsletter: $285.00 to the
Association of Research Libraries for the project Expediting ISO
Protocols and $332.00 to the IFLA/UAP Office for the project ILL Response Codes.
b. The secretary requested and received approval for a section policy
allowing the deduction of bank charges from administrative funds rather
than project allotments, so that project sponsors would receive the full
value of the funds appropriated.
c. The C/B has approved the transfer of surplus funds from the
project Document Supply in Developing Countries to the ILDS Conference in
Pretoria.
The secretary received permission (subsequently approved by the C/B) to
increase this sum from $949.67 to a full $1,000 by transferring money
from administrative funds. This money will be transferred (with a letter of
intent) to the Pretoria conference organizers when an account is
established. (See item 9 below.)
d. The chair has paid from personal funds the registration fee of NLG
250 for Reimer Eck, a guest speaker on the Wednesday program. This sum,
plus bank charges, will be reimbursed from administrative funds.
e. After deductions, the balance remaining in the section's
administrative funds will be approximately $542. This amount will be
"topped up" by IFLA in January 1999 to the equivalent of NLG 1600
(approximately $800). This is the total administrative funds allotted
annually to sections with 151-200 members.
The interim financial report was accepted (with the correction of an error
in a column heading which should read "Balance 6/30/98").
5. Bangkok Conference
The chair reported that Marjorie Bloss, chair of the C/B, had
advised sections that IFLA expected the Bangkok conference to be
attended by a larger than usual proportion of one-time attendees who would be less
familiar with technical terminology and less fluent in English than
audiences at Copenhagen or Amsterdam. For this reason, and because 1999
is an election year which reduces the time available for programs and
workshops, IFLA has recommended restraint in planning speaking events.
With this in mind, the S/C decided to postpone its program/workshop
demonstrating the use of the ILL protocols. The secretary subsequently
communicated by email with Mary Jackson, the ILL protocol project sponsor,
who agreed that waiting until Jerusalem or even Boston would be
preferable, both from the point of view of the audience and of vendors who could
demonstrate use of protocols.
The committee then discussed the possibility of a program that would
provide examples of outstanding document delivery services in Southeast
Asia. Graham Cornish suggested that a program of this type might capitalize
on the UAP Office's experience in presenting a workshop in Bangkok in
1995 titled "From Palm Leaves to PCs: Library Development in South East
Asia."
Mr. Cornish said he had recently been in contact with a Thai librarian
(?) who was developing a document delivery service and he offered to assist
with names of likely speakers. Peter Lor noted that the National
Library of Australia and the National Diet Library have both established links to
Southeast Asian libraries with the intention of developing a document
supply business. The secretary offered to explore contacts known to the
Library of Congress' Jakarta office, also.
Decision: Continue planning discussion at S/C II on Friday.
6. IFLA Office for International Lending/UAP
Graham Cornish reported briefly on a number of projects, all of which are
described extensively in the section's July newsletter. Of specific concern
to the committee, he reported:
IFLA Vouchers
To date $99,766 worth of vouchers have been sold
(11,400 whole vouchers and 3,550 half vouchers). In the past year
approximately 900 have been redeemed, leading to the possibility (suggested
in a separate discussion) that the market for vouchers is now saturated
and net lenders are beginning to accumulate a surplus.
Response Codes
A staff member has been recruited from the British
Library's Document Supply Center to work on compiling a set of symbols
to represent ILL responses irrespective of language. The project is
expected to be completed by Bangkok..
7. Section's Projects
ILL/DD in Developing Countries
Lone Hansen reported that the Thursday
morning workshop would include speakers on the technical and practical
aspects of establishing ILL/DD services to a collection of libraries in
Ghana. The project, which has not yet expanded beyond its initial
connection at Balme University in Accra, is expected to use short-wave
radio transmissions to link PC servers at 6 university libraries. A second
Developing Countries project, sponsored by Norwegian organizations, has
been unable to overcome technical problems in Kenya and has "gone down." A
letter from the Norwegian sponsors has been received by the committee
and will reprinted in the post-conference Newsletter.
Interlibrary Loan Protocols
Mary Jackson was unable to attend the conference due to illness and has submitted a report which will be reprinted in the post-conference Newsletter.
8. Discussion Group on Reference Work
Annsofie Oscarsson, the convener of this discussion group, which operates
under the sponsorship of the committee, reported that the group would
meet on Sunday to explore different ways in which reference work is located
organizationally within libraries, and the different types of work that are
addressed by reference staff, including helping clients in person, by
telephone, or by a variety of correspondence methods.
9. 6th International ILDS Conference, Pretoria
Peter Lor, State Librarian for South Africa, provided a brief update on
plans for the conference. The State Library is providing the secretariat
for the conference organizers, who have held four organizational meeting
so far. The conference theme is "Empowering Society Through the Global
Flow of Information." A sub-theme is to address the question whether technology
is bringing societies together or widening the gap between us. So far the
organizers have received only seven responses to the initial call for
papers and a second call will be sent out shortly. A conference website linked
to the IFLA website will be established in November. Cost for conference
attendees from outside Africa will be 5% higher than the ILDS Aarhus fee
(in US dollars). Costs for African attendees will be less and will be
denominated in Rand.
The committee has allocated approximately $1,000 for use by the conference
organizers to cover early startup costs (deposits for equipment, etc) and
(after registration fees are available) to support the attendance of one
or more African delegates to the conference.
10. Other Business
- a. International Guidelines for Email Document Requests.
- Uwe Schwersky proposed that the committee ask the IFLA Office of
International Lending to develop guidelines for email requests similar
to those developed several years ago for fax requests. Graham Cornish
agreed to accept the task as a "small project" if the committee could
appropriate NLG 600 from Division project funds.
Decision:
The Chair will request NLG 600 for this project from the C/B
on Friday. (This sum was approved by the C/B on Friday pending final action
by the P/B.)
- b. Information Coordinator
- The chair noted that Una Gourlay has resigned her position as Information
Coordinator because she has moved to Singapore and is temporarily out of
touch with the committee's activities. Based on discussions at the C/B,
the secretary suggested this task could be performed by someone in
"observer" status such as Carol Smale, who works at the National Library of Canada
and could easily work with Louise Lantaigne, the IFLANet coordinator at
NLC.
Decision:
The secretary will contact Carol Smale by email to propose her
service as Information Coordinator. (Ms. Smale accepted the assignment
with the approval of the Canadian national librarian during the conference.)
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