Interlibrary loan in Latin America: policies and practices Available to Purchase

Reports on a study sponsored by the Robert Vosper IFLA Fellows Programme concerning interlibrary loan policies and the restrictions on the availability of publications in selected libraries in Colombia,Costa Rica, Mexico and Venezuela. The libraries were selected because of their collections on ecology, food technology and public health topics. Shows that in none of the countries is there an effective national centre which acts as a main agency for developing and maintaining union catalogues to allow direct access to relevant collections within each country and to provide loan and information services to other libraries. To promote the improvement of interlending procedures and plant the seed for the creation of a national interlibrary loan and document delivery centre, it was decided to adopt Cornish′s guide Model Handbook for Interlending and Copying. The guide proved to be useful for interlending operations and helped to reduce some of the obstacles identified by the libraries at the beginning of the study.