Re: Snooze/lose (Was: Academics and coursepacks)

On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Bernard Katz <bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca> wrote:
>
> I have refrained from responding to Albert Henderson's clarification
> re the true impact of the photocopier, as he sees it, until I had
> available to me the data from the 1986 national survey in Canada of
> photocopying practice, published by the Canadian Library Association
> in 1987 (Francoise Hebert, _Photocopying In Canadian Libraries; Report
> of a National Study). Since Mr. Henderson targets the use of
> photocopiers for Interlibrary Loan as the specific culprit in the
> cause of reduced subscripotions and hence increased costs of
> subscriptions for remaining subscribers, let me present some of the
> factual data from F. Hebert's very detailed study.
>
> Articles from periodicals constituted only 1/3 of all ILL requests and
> in 97% of cases were filled by sending a photocopy to the requesting
> library. In the case of academic libraries, however, 57% of ILL
> requests were filled from periodicals and 99% of those were filled with
> photocopies. (1% of ILL requests to public libraries were for books,
> so clearly the bulk of ILL photocopies were made by the academic
> libraries in the survey, with special/governmental libraries also
> providing a fair no. of photocopies for ILL.When all libraries use of
> providing photocopies from periodicals to satisfy other libraries' ILL
> requests are corelated, it represents 32.1% of all ILL requests. As
> there were 663,720 ILL transactions in the year of the study, the no.
> of photocopied articles represents 231,054 requests.The relationship to
> the total no of copies made (exposures) is 8% of all exposures were for
> ILL purposes. I can provide more data, but I suggest that the above is
> clear enough - such photocopying for ILL purposes would not affect
> journal subscriptions in the manner suggested by Mr. Henderson.

This is an interesting snapshot but not so revealing as comparing trends in photocopies and subscriptions. The latest ARL data, up to 1996-97 shows interlibrary borrowing up 112% for the decade. Serials purchased are down 16% and monographs purchased are down 32%.

I stand firm that there is cause and effect. The impact of photocopying has been devestating in the context of the expansion of fair use and the application of fair use to justify cutting library spending.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Mon Sep 28 1998 - 23:37:59 GMT