Resource Sharing:Need for Bridging Gap between Idealistic Theoretical Slogans and Practitioners' Lax

Abstract

It is everybody's knowledge that resource sharing is most talked and least practiced area in librarianship. Several idealistic theoretical slogans have been repeated again and again and many master plans have remained on paper in the custody of planners. These grand ideas and plans are threatening individual libraries that if they do not act they are going to starve and die in the information drought. Even after hearing about the benefits of cooperation and resource sharing egoistic, suspicious and lax attitude on the part of people at the helm of affairs have not yet been overcome. No body is worried about this widening gap between plans and practice of resource sharing. There are clear reasons for the gap between what has been said about resource sharing and what has been achieved so far. This paper, while examining both the high sounding theoretical plans of resource sharing and the practical barriers to resource sharing, explore the inherent limitations of resource sharing philosophy, presents the important factors which militate against resource sharing and how to face and overcome them in a working environment with anecdotes and case studies. What matters much in the game is gracefully accepting the limitations, using appropriate mode of management with least external interference, underscoring the cost saving objective, avoiding buck passing, 'something for nothing syndrome' and empty promises of only bibliographic access without physical access to text and understanding that communication and networks are only means and not ends.