Universal availability of publications in an electronicage

Abstract

In recent years, document supply has lagged far behind bibliographic control. By virtue of automation and telecommunication technologies, online searching in union catalogues has been made possible as well as in catalogues of some distant libraries. All these developments have increased largely requests for interlibrary loaning which has grown rapidly also due to the growing number and prices of publications. Technology and devices of document transmission have broadened, from the traditional reproduction equipment to telefacsimile, to magnetic storage of text, to CD-ROM and to various optical media of data. Technological development is still under way, the availability of documents has been made easier technically but for poor countries the application of modern devices and facilities has become more and more difficult.