UNIVERSAL AVAILABILITY OF PUBLICATIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Although the desirability of Universal Availability of Publications and Universal Bibliographic Control has been accepted by several developing nations its application presents considerable difficulties. Two of the main problems are that publishing is often done by authors, and the legal deposit systems are not always administered by the organisation compiling the national bibliography, therefore bibliographic control is very difficult. Basic library collections must satisfy a country's particular needs, and interlibrary loan systems should be used to complement them. Various political and currency problems also need to be overcome.