Interlibrary lending

The publication of bibliographies and library catalogs heightened awareness that no library could afford to be self-sufficient, and this awareness in turn stimulated interest in various forms of interlibrary cooperation. Cooperation probably originated informally, with readers referring to union catalogs to locate libraries that contained the books they wanted. One of the earliest formal organizations began with the Central Library for Students, founded in London by Albert Mansbridge in 1916. This was transformed in 1930 into the National Central Library, which continued to act as a lending library but also formed the centre of a network of regional library bureaus. The bureaus were located in a major regional library and, with one exception, built up union catalogs of holdings in the local public libraries to facilitate interlibrary lending. The National Central Library encouraged other university and special libraries to participate. The National Central Library has since become part of the British Library Lending Division, which undertakes a major part of interlibrary lending both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

The progress of interlibrary lending, coupled with the great losses suffered by libraries in Europe and Asia during World War II, led to an interest in cooperative acquisition of new materials. In 1948 the British National Book Centre was set up at the National Central Library in London to gather unwanted duplicates and to distribute them to the libraries that had suffered losses. It proved to be of incalculable value and was soon followed by the United States Book Exchange; both distributed lists of wants and offers to their member libraries.

Cooperative acquisition and storage

An ambitious program for cooperative acquisition of foreign materials by American libraries was conceived in the Library of Congress in 1942. This was the Farmington Plan: it involved the recruitment of purchasing agents in many countries, whose task was to buy their countries’ current publications and distribute them to American libraries according to a scheme of subject specialization. Many criticisms were leveled at the scheme, and as a blanket operation it inevitably acquired a certain amount of trivia; but many research libraries have benefited by the acquisition of materials that otherwise would have been difficult to obtain.

Pressure on library space spurred librarians to discuss means of cooperative storage. Perhaps the foremost example is the Center for Research Libraries (formerly the Midwest Interlibrary Center) in Chicago, which began in 1952 as a centre for deposit of duplicate and little-used materials from research libraries. With the aid of a special grant, the University of London established a depository library, at Royal Holloway College away from the centre of London, to which the colleges of the university can send materials for either cooperative or private storage. The British Library Lending Division also acts as a cooperative store; it receives unwanted items from any library and makes them generally available. Both of these libraries reserve the right to refuse items that they already have in cooperative storage.

Cooperative cataloging

A number of important organizations facilitating library cooperation have been established to store and retrieve catalog records. In the United States, a library cooperative in Ohio grew into the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, a not-for-profit company with a database of millions of catalog records to which libraries can purchase access. Other organizations that store catalog records for retrieval by participating libraries have a regional focus or serve only one type of library, such as research libraries. In Canada, two organizations developed for storing bibliographic data; one is in the National Library of Canada and the other started as the cataloging centre of the University of Toronto and evolved into a for-profit corporation selling bibliographic records and other computer services to libraries. In Britain, the British Library became the supplier of cooperative library cataloging to all British libraries. Other library networks have been built around common automation choices. Groups of libraries that use the same circulation system or OPAC frequently organize to exchange information, advice, and bibliographic records.