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lost? in the ILL future
With the usual caveats about my not doing much ILL directly (and therefore speaking with a certain degree of ignorance), I think there is a library segment that we are forgetting about as we contemplate a future without ILL. The segment I am referring to is composed of very small special libraries who cannot afford to subscribe to expensive journals. Yes, some special libraries have money. Others (some hospital libraries come to mind) do not. In the print world, these libraries have traditionally relied on interlibrary loan to fulfill their information needs for all but a very core set of journals. I would suspect that due to small numbers of clientele, they also don't regularly hit the CONTU "wall". In an electronic world with no ILL, what are they facing? I suppose that there are those who would argue that they've been freeloading off of the rest of us, but isn't that the tradition (in US libraries at least)? Free access to information by those who need it... We all know that someone is subsidizing this "free" information, but that is the point. There are large research institutions who have taken that subsidization as part of their mission. As we think about the future of ILL, we also need to remember all that it has been doing, so we can consciously decide that each aspect is no longer workable or desirable. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kimberly Parker Science Bibliographer Kline Science Library Yale University 219 Prospect Street/P.O. Box 208111 voice: (203) 432-3443 New Haven, CT 06520-8111 fax: (203) 432-3441 U.S.A. kimberly.parker@yale.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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