Library Resource Sharing

[Sujan B. Chakraborty]

Library resource sharing is a valuable addition to the world of libraries. Any library can access the resources of other libraries. I think its a huge advantage to the libraries who have very limited resources. Even if a small library at a very remote place can access the resources of a library situated at a metro city, provided the library equipped with good networking facilities.

But the dim area below the candle is: educational institutes like engineering colleges, private degree colleges etc. are not well aware of library resource sharing. So the students are also not well informed about the library resource sharing. If a college library is unable to provide a book to a student due to the unavailability of the book in that particular library. The library can easily access other college libraries for the book if the libraries are enabled with library resource sharing and can easily provide service to the students.

But unfortunately all these facilities are not being utilised by the college libraries or rather they are not well aware of library resource sharing.

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

 Dear Sujan Bandhu,

 

Thanks for your query and I presume it springs from your practical experience. Indeed Resource sharing is a phenomenal issue however it requires certain formalities; first of which is approval from the top management.

From my experience, I can  tell you that unless and until a librarian receives an official approval from the authority, s/he should better refrain from such venture. Otherwise, any loss or mutilation will be the sole responsibility of that individual and will be subjected to strong audit comments!!

Second is mutual agreement among the participating Libraries.

Sharing of resources is a cooperative venture and should be a both way flow. If a particular library is always a receiver, the system can not continue for long. A certain type of private institutions remain unwilling to spend for Library collection development as their motto remains to make profit and thereby exploits this noble venture. I can say from my own personal experience. We  prepare aquarterly list of our acquisition and we used to send the copies of that list among several institutes. After some time I noticed that certain institutes started sending requests for high cost books and I came to know that those books were photocopied in full and in multiple copies!!. The books bear our Library's stamp and Call & Accession Numbers etc. Some of the leading publishers somehow collected copies of such photocopied books and complained to me. I apologised to the Publishers and stopped issuing books on inter-Library loan to several such institutes.

We proposed that we can provide photocopies of pertinent portions as per fair use norm upon written request in prescribed proforma where the user (individual/institute) gives us written undertaking that the purpose is for personal academic use only. . We keep profile of such photocopies and if we find that they are trying to get copies of continious pages, we warn then or simply refuse them.

 

I hope you can understand the practical discomforts relating to  resource sharing.

 

Regards,

 

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

[Sujan B. Chakraborty]

Thank you Sir for your valuable thoughts.

Actually, I am a newbie in this field. I am greatly impressed by the facilities of library resource sharing. It is a way, probably the only way, to build up a world library consortium which, I think, in future will help every student from every corner of the world.

But, obviously, there are the problems as you mentioned before. We can hope that we can win over every constraint to help the world with knowledge from every corner.

 

Thanks & regards.

Sujan

[Abhishek kr pandey]

can u provide pdf format of resource sharing sir...

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

De