Interlibrary Loan 1952-62: Ten Years of Progress?

摘要

Although the revised General Interlibrary Loan Code of 1952 was designed to alleviate the “crisis” in interlibrary loan services existing at the time, libraries today find that they are still facing the same problems as they did in 1952, namely, excessive use of large, distant libraries for materials available locally, unverified references, stringent restrictions on the materials lent and their subsequent use, and the rising cost of operating interlibrary loan programs. A brief description of the use and abuse of interlibrary loans at the National Library of Medicine is followed by consideration of the alternatives to the concept of interlibrary loan presently under study in various regions. To relieve the current situation, it is proposed that federal funds be made available to medical and scientific libraries on the basis of the percentage of interlibrary loan transactions handled (2 percent of their total circulation figure), that present lending restrictions on materials be relaxed, that photocopying of articles in lieu of loan of the original be done to a greater extent, and that standardized procedures in handling requests be instituted.