From your new editor

From your new editor

There have only been two previous editors of ILDS since it was first published in 1971 and I now introduce myself as the third. I retired recently after 32 years with the British Library, the last 12 years of which were spent marketing the services of the Document Supply Centre in Europe and latterly in the UK. Therefore I will be known to at least some of the readers of ILDS. However my task is not to be an ageing defender of the British Library – it is big enough to look after itself. In fact from this issue I will be producing the journal independently from the BL; this is a consequence of the decision by the British Library to cease supporting the production of the journal.

Leaving the information technology womb of a large organisation and relying on my own IT "skills" at home has been a challenging experience. Why has my PM (physical memory for the uninitiated) dropped to zero? Why is my home computer manufacturer's help line always engaged? BL's customer services could show them a thing or two.

My dependence on IT is of course inevitable – how could it be otherwise with the enormous benefit it confers? When accessing the British Library public catalogue it still staggers me to remember that only a few years ago you would have to pay a visit to the Reading Rooms in Bloomsbury and thumb through the big blue volumes arranged aesthetically but inefficiently round the centre desk. And then what you wanted quite likely would not be there. Now most of the collection records are available at the press of a button from your own terminal.

Nonetheless I still stick to my A5 civil service day diary – echoing an IT journalist in The Guardian recently who has ditched his latest palm top for – a Filofax.

In future the new information world will be an ever shifting mix of the old and the new. Confusion arises because the old is boring, the new is exciting. Many people try to make lots of money out of new things and that is where the action is. The new provides opportunities for people like you and me to write about the brave new world.

This journal will evaluate the mix as well as look critically at both the new and the old. It will analyse the balance between ownership and access, between"e" and non-"e", between ILL and "e" books. It will resist simplistic slogans. The future is not all "e", printed books will not disappear, open archives will not replace commercial publishing – at least on any timescale meaningful to people in the real world.

The future is rainbow coloured, with cloud and sun and yes, rain as well.

I have set myself three key objectives:

• 1.

  to continue the international emphasis of the journal;

• 2.

  to be as up to date as possible in reporting the changes that are taking place in interlending and document supply; and

• 3.

  to introduce new topics, letters, more reviews; also articles that explore the implications of the wider changes that are going on the information world that will impact on our own specialised sector.

Finally, let us hope that all this information that we are organising and delivering will help to save the planet – but that is a story for other journals.

In this issue

Arlene Cohen describes resource sharing in surely the world's most far flung region – the Pacific islands. Terry Morrow gives a blow by blow account of the development of EASY, a project designed to give unmediated access to documents for the UK higher education community, with the cooperation of publishers. Mike McGrath contributes a review article on an important conference held in London which looked at researcher use of electronic resources. Christelle Creff writes on French developments in opening interlending services to end users. Stephen Prowse and Dennis Massie look at another UK project which attempts to crack the knotty problem of resource sharing of non returnables in the UK higher education community. Underlining the international scope of the journal, Eun-Ja Shin and Kyung-Mook Oh write on developments in South Korea andÉva Kürti keeps us up to date on developments in Hungary. Based on the Australian experience, Paul Genoni casts doubts on the UK initiative to create a distributed national collection of printed material. Finally our popular Miscellany appears combined with the Bibliography and in future will be produced every three months instead of six, thus providing you with more up-to-date support.

And please do not hesitate to volunteer contributions, short or long. Letters are also welcome – especially if they are controversial! I am at: mike.mcgrath@britishlibrary.net

Mike McGrath