Impact of Digital Technology on Library Resource Sharing : Revisiting LABELNET in the Digital Age

Resource-sharing whether formal or informal, is a commonpractice in libraries across the globe. The concept vaguely startedin late 18th century with the founding of American LibraryAssociation (1876) and slowly gained momentum in the comingdecades. It started from shared cataloging, resulting into OCLC(1967). Then in mid 70’s, the exponential growth in number ofpublications and the shrinking library budgets due to financialcrisis, gave way to the concept of Cooperative Collection Development and initiatives like Research Libraries Group (RLG) appeared. This led to formation of Library Networks, Forums and consortia at all levels and helped development of the infrastructure for resource-sharing by introducing the development of Union catalogs, union lists of serials and refining and formalizing the Inter-library Loan Systems (ILLs) widening them to state-wide and International levels and introduced concepts like ared access to library members.