Reprography and copyright with particular reference to inter‐library lending activities—a view from the BLLD

Abstract

The British Library Lending Division has been involved in the copyright debate for some time. The Division comes up against copyright issues in a number of areas of activity—collection development, conservation, translating and bibliographic. Not surprisingly however, most controversy and discussion has centred around its reprographic activities. It is eight years ago since Line and Wood published their article ‘The effect of a large scale photocopying service on journal sales’ and it is interesting that many of the points which were made at that time remain valid. This article looked specifically at the activities of the Lending Division but the arguments used could easily have been made in defence of inter‐library lending (ILL) activities in general.