Resource Sharing: The Pesent Situation and The Likely Effect of Electronic Technology

The increasing attention given to resource sharing as a concept is not matched by practical progress; shortage of funds makes it more desirable but less practicable, whether libraries try to share their own resources or share a central facility. Many of the obstacles to sharing, such as limited local resources and the inability to handle much external demand, are intrinsic and cannot be solved by technology, but it can nevertheless alleviate some of the procedural hindrances, such as union list construction, maintenance and access and the transmission and switching of requests. The application of electronic technology to document transmission is at present uneconomic and desirable only in cases of special urgency. The availability of original texts in electronic form may change this situation but only slowly and not for all documents. The private sector may play an increasing role, and libraries may have less involvement not only in the supply of documents to other libraries but in access to documents for their users.