International interlibrary lending activity in Romania and co‐operation with other countries

Abstract

The economic difficulties Romania has been experiencing for the last seven years are reflected in library services. Owing to decreasing budgets, libraries are no longer able to buy foreign books or subscribe to important foreign journals. That makes the International Loan Service the main method of gaining access to recent scientific and technical literature for most researchers. Only the National Library deals with international loan activity for the whole country. However, this is due less to any policy of centralization than to a legacy from the former regime, where control of all information from the West was required. Since then, the only improvement there has been is that material requested through international loan is no longer censored, but the minimal funds allotted for this service force the librarian to act in some way like a censor, deciding which customers and requests to satisfy. Despite the hard times, the International Loan Section of the National Library of Romania manages to acquire about 700 items from abroad every year.