“Access services” is defined by one contributor in this, the first issue of Journal of Access Services, as “Every library activity related to giving users access to relevant information”. The subject covers such topics as collection management, acquisition, financial control, interlibrary loan, stock circulation, resource sharing, library buildings, storage, use statistics, ownership, copyright, and so forth, all traditional library management disciplines and topics – though the newer activity of distance education is added. Are we not, then, talking “support services” or “technical services”? Such questions are addressed in the opening article in which five of the Editorial Advisory Board members discuss the background and context of access services. It is clearly, though, the advent of library automation, access to digital resources and, particularly, electronic access, which is the key to the new perspective. Other changes in the library environment have also contributed to the rise of access services. These include the increasing emphasis on the user as a consumer of information; the need for efficient inter‐dependence of the various library departments to provide a quality (and measurable) service; and a change in service philosophy from “just‐in‐case” to “just‐in‐time”; or, more poetically: “The field‐of‐dream theory of the physical library (‘If you build it, they will come’) is being transformed by streams of electrons”. The provision of reserve materials being scanned and delivered electronically perhaps exemplifies the new “access services” scenario. Another interesting observation was that as in‐house library use falls, electronic access will grow.
Part two features a general overview of the literature from 1990 to 1999, while a second focuses specifically on interlibrary loan, document delivery, and resource sharing. In Part three, four articles look at the current context for access services. A UK contribution looks at the barriers and enablers in access services through evidence from the JISC User Behaviour in Information Seeking: Longitudinal Evaluation of EIS Project (JUBILEE) which is monitoring electronic information services. “Are you who you say you are?” looks at network access management in community college libraries and considers the difficult problem of controlling user access to resources in a networked environment. The interlibrary loan problems relating to full text online journals and the BLDSC “Inside” service is considered in a third article, while “Emerging trends in fee‐based information delivery” is the title of the fourth. Finally, Part four asks “Do access services have a future?’
Forthcoming articles billed are: “Licensing and the interlibrary loan workflow”, “Electronic reserves in support of online learning communities”; “Twenty‐four hour services”; “Using a student employee survey to inform and improve access services”; and “An effective Web gateway to access services”. The question of whether this is a genuine new library discipline, or merely a cosmetic re‐configuration of existing services, does not really matter. The cover subtitle to this issue is “Innovation for electronic and digital library and information services”, and we all need information on this.
This new journal would seem to promise new views on continuing issues of library service to users, and comment and insight on new and emerging issues in our increasingly electronic environment. I recommend this new journal to all who are concerned about the future of libraries and information supply.
