INTERLIBRARY LENDING IN ENGLAND AND WALES FROM 1945 Available to Purchase

The history of interlending since 1945 is inseparable from changes taking place in the infrastructure of library and information services and from progressive innovation in communications technology. Three phases of development can be discerned. In the first interlending based on linking individual library services through the NCL/RB system and supplemented by co‐operative acquisition schemes is paralleled by the rise of a national centralized lending service to science and technology. Expansion of library services in the academic and public sectors in the second phase gives rise to co‐operative schemes including interlending to meet specific needs. The successful and progressive development of the NLLST influences traditional interlending modes and the period closes with a rationalization of the national library structure and of the public library system for the next phase of development. This takes place against growing economic restraints and is one of integration and extension of the centralized lending services of the British Library Lending Division and a reassessment of regional connections. The innovative force of computerization is taken up at regional level by LASER and nationally by the British Library Lending Division. Such developments are intrinsic to the considerations of the LISC report Working together. This will form the basis of an evolutionary approach to national co‐ordination and co‐operation in which interlending is fundamental to an access strategy of library and information services.