Interlibrary lending: individual carelessness, public attitudes

Abstract

The availability in Hungary of foreign scientific journals is analyzed from several aspects. Is is concluded that less than half of the world's science periodicals is available in the country and, in addition, the periodical holdings of the research institutes are nonuniform. Consequently, a reliable and prompt interlending and photocopying system is of primary importance. However, the analysis of response times to the interlibrary loan requests of the Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences revealed that interlibrary transactions consumed much longer time than allowed by the rules (3-8 days). As a possible solution to this problem the authors propose the cooperation of some principal libraries in various subject fields which would be responsible for the photocopy supply based on 10-15 joumals each.