ABSTRACT

This chapter considers shifting resources invested in interlibrary loan staff support as well as periodicals subscriptions to paying for user-direct use of commercial document delivery services. It focuses on resource sharing as a way of explaining why commercial document delivery is important. Commercial document delivery is the newest in a succession of tools used by librarians to support user information needs. Librarianship, at its simplest level, is a profession that seeks to bring patrons and the information that they need together in the quickest and most cost-efficient manner possible. The problem for collection development librarians is to determine overall how much should be spent on ownership and how much to spend on commercial document delivery. Determining and defending the correct mix of electronic and print ownership and access expenditures will vary from institution to institution. But what the collection development librarian has to be able to do is successfully defend the process used to determine the right mix.