Resource sharing in the electronic era: potentials and paradoxes - Networked Scholarly Publishing

Library Trends, Spring, 1995 by Gay N. Dannelly

The excitement of providing greater resources and broader and more effective access to information in our local libraries and in libraries across the country (and with the Internet, the world) is tempered by the organizational cost borne by the library. Users are looking for vast arrays of information and then looking for ways to filter it in order to minimize information overload. The paradoxes in the library environment influence our ability to manage the local library as well as the ability to participate in effective resource sharing. Libraries need to establish methods of delivering information that are more effective for the individual library user and that take full advantage of the broader information environment. However, interlibrary loan is about to collapse under the incredible increases in demands and the lack of resources available to support that function. Thus the traditional process of ILL activity, on which resource sharing activities have been based, is ceasing to function effectively just as libraries become more dependent on its use.

The governing institutions of libraries have unrealistic expectations of resource sharing, particularly as they reduce financial support for library functions. Libraries will have to reevaluate their priorities and consider the implications of relying on ownership or access or the mix that is appropriate for a specific institution. This may well require the movement of cost centers, staff reallocation, rearrangement of space, and the hiring of personnel with a wider variety of skills or more specialized skills.

In an electronic environment that increasingly relies on resource sharing, new elements are central to the provision of library services, collection decisions, and staffing needs. Libraries have participated in formal interlibrary lending arrangements since the beginning of the century. "The library community has been struggling with how best to promote the acquisition, control and mobility of materials among libraries....This tri-partite framework for resource sharing has been developed in an attempt to enable people at every level of society to find the information they are seeking" (Dougherty & Hughes, 1990, p. 1). The recent developments in computer networks, bibliographic utilities, and digitized transmission of images has enhanced the capability of interlibrary lending programs. However, the rapidly increasing load on these traditional mechanisms with their labor-intensive checking and verification and the increasing demands for materials not available at the local library have stretched the capability of the library community to the breaking point. The availability of electronic bibliographic databases has exacerbated an already troublesome situation. The costs of interlibrary lending and borrowing, as a library function, are now so high that it has become a serious drain on local services and personnel and, in many cases, libraries have been forced to decrease other library services in support of resource sharing services or to institute higher charges for borrowing of their materials.