Resource Sharing, Networking and Library Consortia in India: Problems and Prospects

The emerging Information Technologies have brought many changes in libraries. These technologies have facilitated LIS professionals to work together to acquire and share library collection and provide digital library services to the user community. Increase of the literature in all subjects and shrinking of the library budget made the libraries depend upon each other. Faced with financial crunch, while a library could restrict acquisition of materials in the peripheral areas, it tries its best not shed anything from its core acquisition list. Therefore in a collective development situation, it is logical for a library to look up the other institutions for meeting its peripheral interest. Even in this situation a library can drop an item from the core item to the same ensured by another library in the neighborhood. To achieve aforesaid objectives various library and information center networks were emerged. A number of resource sharing networks has been observed at local, regional, national and international levels.