National Infrastructure of Library and Information Services in Arab Countries Available to Purchase

The existing situation of library and information infrastructure in Arab countries is examined. Six factors studied were: status of the national library, state of the art of national bibliographic control,availability of indexing and abstracting services, state of inter‐library co‐operation, existing networking connections, and applications of modern technology. The information was gathered by reviewing the relevant literature and by administering a questionnaire to selected resource persons in the relevant countries. Information collected from 15 countries revealed some inherent shortcomings in the infrastructures of these countries which impede any efforts towards networking and resource sharing.