I'm afraid Ms. Fletcher does not see that the point of ILL
policies is precisely NOT to "reduce the burden on
library staff
and the waste of paper, ink, time, and electricity."
It is by
making ILL inefficient that publishers avoid the Universal
Customer Problem.
The Universal Customer Problem, which is hinted at in
Daviess
Menefee's earlier post, refers to a situation where a single
digital copy of a document, sold to a single customer (the
Universal Customer), is then copied and recopied and made
available to other users, eliminating the requirement that
anyone
but the first, the Universal, customer pays for the
document.
Thus a publisher faces the prospect that ILL or any other
means
of file-sharing will result in a marketplace that consists
of
precisely one customer and no more.
There are ways to work around this. For one, a publisher
could
charge a huge amount for the first and only copy and
essentially
delegate the task of serial dissemination to the Universal
Customer. This is unlikely, as it would be hard to get an
institution to volunteer to be the one paying customer.
Another
possibility is to authorize a certain number of copies for
ILL,
but then there is the pesky problem of enforcement. Or a
publisher could arrange consortium licensing, whereby ILL is
restricted to a declared set of institutions. No doubt
there are
other variants, but they all have as their basis the need to
keep
the Universal Customer out of the marketplace.
For this reason, ILL for digital products will eventually
disappear, replaced by open access, restricted access (no
ILL
rights), or consortial access. ILL, in other words, is an
artifact of the print era and has no place in digital
publishing.
Joe Esposito
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adelaide Fletcher" <fletchera denvermedlib.org>
To: <liblicense-llists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 2:32 PM
Subject: RE: ejournals and ILL
> Why not allow a mediated system, then, where requests
are
> filtered by a human who then downloads an electronic
copy and
> emails it to the requester? This would not change the
> definition of authorized users, and it would
significantly
> reduce the burden on library staff and the waste of
paper, ink,
> time, and electricity.
>
> *********************
> Adelaide Fletcher, MLIS, AHIP
> Electronic Resources Librarian
> Denver Medical Library
> Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center
> Denver, CO 80218
> 303.839.6670
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-llists.yale.edu] On Behalf
Of Menefee, Daviess
> (ELS-NYC)
> Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 6:19 PM
> To: liblicense-llists.yale.edu
> Subject: ejournals and ILL
>
> In response to Beth Jacoby's question of Feb. 29:
>
> First, I want to assure you that the license you
received was
> current when you received it in October, 2007. Certain
changes
> to the template were made in December and do not affect
the ILL
> clause other than to include book chapters and make
certain
> terminology changes (e.g. eliminating the term
Excerpt). We will
> be happy to work with you to incorporate the new
language.
>
> As to why we require printing first (and our
understanding is
> that most publishers also do this), the reasons are
fairly
> simple. First, this is most closely analogous to the
traditional
> and well-understood practices of print, where one
photocopies or
> scans the print. What is received by the requester is
about the
> same quality copy.
>
> Second, we are concerned about those within the ILL
community who
> advocate an unmediated system, where requesters enter
their
> requests electronically and these requests are
automatically
> routed electronically to a library holding the
material. The
> article can be retrieved and returned to the requester
without
> the need for human intervention. While we can
appreciate the
> efficiency of such a system, it effectively changes
the
> definition of Authorized User in our agreement from
those within
> the subscribing institution to anyone anywhere in the
world.
>
> Daviess Menefee
> Library Relations Elsevier
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