Dogma Clouds the Facts.

Abstract

IN AN EARLIER ARTICLE, I PRE sented evidence calling into question resource sharing and networking trends in public librarianship today.1 I pointed out that interlibrary loans are typically a fraction of one percent of public library circulation?even in states such as Illinois?and that most of the sharing is between public libraries. School and spe cial libraries contribute less than one per cent of even this small figure. And it has always been this way because patrons are unwilling to accept a definition of access to books that requires them to go some where else or await future delivery. The proof against a fix for resource sharing through the use of computers and telefacsimile equipment can be seen in the effect produced at the end of the 19th century, when public libraries switched from closed stacks to open shelf collections. Their circulation soared. For the patron, bibliographic networking is merely a return to the closed-stack concept. No technological future can possibly improve on the access provided by a closed stack collection for either knowledge of holdings or delivery speed. The lesson we should have learned, however, is that people want to browse among books. They quietly insist on this by ignoring alternatives. They will not ask

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