THE 16TH CONGRESS OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN LIBRARIES: CONSAL XVI
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libraries: 4, Public libraries: 331, Academic libraries: 494, Rural libraries: 1,121, Special
libraries: 691, School libraries:10,659 and KEMAS resource centre: 283.
The old notion of possession in collection development is gradually being replaced by access
to information and knowledge without favour to site and format. Resource sharing among
libraries has become the mutual aspiration and practice. Increase in the volume of library
materials and information, the increasing costs of acquiring and processing them, the need for
trained personnel, storage space, and the increasing demands by users are motivating factors
for libraries to share books, journals, preprints, catalogues, list of publications, recent
additions, newsletters, policy decisions, current events, news flash, etc. Agreeing to Sangal
(1984). “The present race between knowledge and book production has made it impossible
for any library, however big it may be, to acquire all the printed literature in the world even
on the smallest area of the spectrum of knowledge, or to cope with even a fraction of the
daily production of literature”