A MODEL NATIONAL INTERLENDING SYSTEM FOR BRAZIL Available to Purchase

The need for adequate access to documents continues to grow, as does the total volume of the world's publications. Improvements in bibliographic control in the last 10 years have led both to fuller coverage of documents and to better and faster access to references. Document access relies more and more on interlibrary access because the great growth in number and cost of publications is making libraries increasingly unable to provide their readers with all the publications they need. Alternative models of interlibrary provision, according to centralization or decentralization of collections form a useful framework for considering the best solutions for Brazil. In practice, models must always be mixed, and the most important element in planning is to find the optimum balance of centralization and decentralization appropriate to each country. In Brazil, the best solution would almost certainly be the creation of a core collection of scientific and technical journals (excluding medicine and agriculture), a decentralized system for monographs, except Brazilian monographs, and the creation of a single supply centre for report literature. No special provision would be made for conference proceedings, or foreign official publications. Dissertations would be made available by the relevant universities. Trade literature should be collected in major industrial centres for consultation purposes.