Opinion paper: from interlending and document delivery to co‐operative collections and document access

By providing users with electronic fee‐paid access to co‐operatively‐developed digital collections, librarians can overcome some of their budgetary problems and can continue to have a role in meeting the information needs of research workers. If they continue to believe that interlending and document supply services should be free or subsidised then the quality of these ser bvices will continue to decline and dissatisfied users will gradually turn to commercial information providers to meet their needs.