LIBRARY RESOURCE SHARING IN THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS

Abstract

The United Kingdom library system has a two‐tier resource sharing network, with the regional library services operating at local level and the BLDSC at national level. Taking the National Health Service libraries as a basis, the author discusses regional co‐operation from the organizational, service and economic viewpoints. Interlibrary resource sharing is valuable not only for its tangible benefits, but also (provided it is reliable and economically sound) because it provides a basis for the sharing of specialist subject knowledge, searching skills and ideas, and it also permits more general professional interaction, thus frequently bearing unexpected fruit. Several ideas have been put forward for the extension of inter‐regional co‐operation, but the importance of cost‐benefit analysis when evaluating any such scheme cannot be over‐stressed. The true cost of staff time is an item often overlooked: an appendix here gives a method of calculating the economic benefit of a resource sharing scheme by comparing the cost of co‐operative interlibrary photocopying using a union list of serials with that of using prepaid BLDSC forms.