Opinion paper: Is national planning for acquisitions and document supply still valid?

The time when every country needed to plan its own acquisitions and document supply system may be over. For purposes of consultation, it is most convenient for users to have wanted items that are not available locally in one large collection, though this runs into political and other difficulties. Co‐operative acquisition systems rarely work. Remote consultation of digitised material would change this situation. It is now usually as fast to obtain “copiable” items from foreign countries as from one’s own, even when they have to be supplied by paper copies; and more and more items are accessible on the Internet. For books, the time taken to supply and the cost still vary considerably between domestic and other sources; there is no easy solution unless and until large amounts of material are digitised, and then remote supply and remote consultation begin to merge. As a result of the various factors, there is now no need for national acquisition and supply policies.