From Physical to web-enabled delivery: The odyssey of document delivery service

The libraries share their resources with other libraries to meet users’ demand, as every library cannot acquire everything required and ‘just in case’ demand of the library user. The practice of library cooperation among libraries started way back in 1940s with Farmington plan. Later it became a convention of resource sharing. It is probably the library fraternity that have an unequalled and unstinted practice of sharing resources and is continuing relentlessly to the present web-era. The extent of Inter Library Loans (ILL), one of the best practices of resource sharing, has reached million transactions per annum by OCLC service. The sharing manifests into books, articles, book chapters of reports and all forms of documents and so on. ILL manifested also as, article alert, document delivery, reprography and document back-up service. Its by-product is the creating of new information product called Union Catalogue, served as a referral tool to find the required resource. The service has such a magnitude, that national lending services were instituted, namely the British Library Document Supply Centre, and that shows the importance of this service. The paper has delineated the perspective transformation of this one facet of resource sharing service as practiced by the libraries, information centres and systems, including the Online and Internet-based services.