Editorial—The Journey of the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve

In 1990, Leslie Morris declared that beyond his own distaste for the glut of new journals to the field of Library Science, “Interlibrary loan librarians deserve their own journal. Interlibrary loan (ILL) is not a subfield of reference services, public services, circulation or any other field” (Morris, 1990, p. 1.). Thus opened the first issue of the Journal of Interlibrary Loan & Information Supply. Rebranded in volume four to the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply, the journal boasted articles covering a variety of subjects from hardware evaluation, international ILL projects, implication of digital resources, automation, and the use of ILL data in the library. That was 1993.

The journal, under Morris, became a go-to resource for librarians and library professionals operating in the increasingly specialized ILL, document delivery, and reserves services. The content was thought provoking and instructive. In 2006, the journal expanded this identity as a resource by copublishing Lee Andrew Hilyer's Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery: Best Practices for Operating and Managing Interlibrary Loan Services in All Libraries, a monograph under Haworth Information Press, as a special issue. The book was reviewed as an excellent introduction to ILL practices and essential reading for librarians new to ILL (Ruppel, 2008), and singled out as a primary work tackling the management of ILL and document delivery services (Burrows, 2013).

Leslie Morris guided and grew the journal as editor until his death at the end of 2008. During this time, he wrote an editorial for each issue and became known for his thoughtful, humorous, and diverse insights (Morris, 2009). In a piece pondering the focus on attendance tracking in academic libraries, he proposed a couple wild ideas for padding the gate counter numbers including pulling a fire alarm mid-day so everyone in the building will be counted twice as they reenter (Morris, 2008). He was quick to point out deficiencies in how ILL departments operated, like the common lack of written or posted ILL policies, and offer solutions and instructions (Morris, 2005). His guidance of the journal inspired community participation even when it did not explicitly call for it, like the time he used ILL e-mails lists to solicit ILL and electronic Reserve Haikus in 2008.

In 2009, the incorporation of Resource Sharing & Information Networks (1983–2009) rebranded the journal once again into what we know it as today. Resource Sharing & Information Networks (RSIN) had been dedicated to the niche needs of librarians who required “basic information on the mechanics—political, procedural, and technical—of library networking” (Donlan & Stites, 2010). The editors from RSIN, Rebecca Donlan and Barbara J. Stites, introduced themselves in volume 20 of the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve or JILDDER and pointed out that the increased automation in ILL, course reserves, and document delivery made the merger of the journals a natural next step. The scope of the journal expanded from strictly ILL, electronic reserve, and document delivery to include all manner of “collaborative provision of information services” including “cooperative collections development, shared virtual library services and digitization projects” (Donlan & Stites, 2010, p. 1). Donlan and Stites said goodbye to RSIN with a thank you to the editors who came before them: journal founders Robert P. Holley, Shellie Jeffries, and William Miller.

JILDDER continued its discussion with its readers through Donlan and Stites' editorials on issues affecting the ILL services of libraries large and small. Some topics, like Wikipedia, seemed peripheral (Donlan, 2010), while others, like discovery interfaces, grew in ubiquity (Donlan, 2011). No matter how wide ranging, the topics in JILDDER illustrate how reliant ILL is on other library services, and how ILL activities affect those same services. To further emphasize JILDDER’s devotion to supporting the discussion around, and resulting improvements in, ILL, document delivery, and electronic reserves services, a new column, Reports from the Field, was announced in volume 24 by LeEtta Schmidt, who had taken over the duties of Associate Editor from Barbara Stites in 2012.

The first Reports from the Field submission came from Ryan Litsey of Texas Tech University Library. “Occam's Reader: A Manifesto on the New Frontiers in Resource Sharing and Content Collaboration” presented a problem with which resource sharing librarians everywhere were becoming very familiar: the increasing imbalance between e-book content providing immediate access to local users while at the same time creating a void in shareable resources for ILL patrons (Litsey, 2014). Litsey also offered a solution to this problem: Occam's Reader, a first and only current solution to interlibrary lending e-books.

At the end of 2014, Rebecca Donlan left her position at JILDDER to become editor of Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, and, soon after, Ryan Litsey joined Editor LeEtta Schmidt as Associate Editor. The aims of JILDDER, as they have always been, are to encourage the discourse of ideas and innovations that make resource sharing services vital, flexible, and constantly evolving. “This journal aims to support the wide spread and fast paced advancement of library resource sharing by capturing the trials, research, and innovations of librarians and library professionals, both local and international, and delivering news of these endeavors to the benefit of others in the field” (Journal of Interlibrary Loan…, 2017). JILDDER’s 2016 collaboration with the Great Lakes Resource Sharing Conference was another milestone in these aims, by encouraging presenters to widen their audience by expanding on their projects and research in writing, and by documenting yet another piece of the conversation that drives the evolution of resource sharing.

The editors challenge you to bring your own innovations, trials, successes, and failures to forum. Is your library embarking on a new endeavor into or evaluating an existing agreement for collection, service, or other resource sharing? Are your ILL, document delivery, or reserves departments collaborating with other departments in the library, like instruction, preservation, acquisitions, or special collections, to produce new and interesting services, harvest actionable data, or evaluate for library reorganization and improvements? What are your challenges? We want to hear from you.