Interlending in New Environments

Abstract

The change to a market economy in the USSR is having a great effect upon the work of libraries including a decrease in requests through the interlending system though requests in some areas, especially on political, legal, juridical, and economic problems, are up. The lack of hard currency has made it difficult to purchase foreign documents; only roughly one third of these requests are filled. The Lenin State Library is working on its own model of an Interlending Centre to take advantage of new technology and to establish new economic methods. It is also hoped that the unified check system proposed by G. Cornish will simplify payment for international interlending. Effective interlending is hindered by the lack of union catalogs in print or in machine-readable formats. It is also necessary to have a better idea of foreign libraries' interest for Soviet publications, to provide information about resources on these topics, and to support the resulting increased interlending. Finally, efforts should be made to raise the level of knowledge for interlending staff in Soviet libraries.