An evaluation of book availability in Taiwan university libraries: A resource sharing perspective

This study is intended to answer the following questions: Have university libraries in Taiwan acquired books recommended by selection aids? Can university library collections in Taiwan sufficiently fill users' requests? Do libraries of different collection sizes process users' requests in an unbiased and efficient manner?This study employed interviews and document delivery tests. Librarians from 15 university libraries were interviewed to investigate their thoughts on ILL services. Samples from Choice and Bowker'sGlobal Books in Print were searched for through the online catalogs of 148 university libraries. This study concludes that resource sharing will not operate in an equitable way if most user requests are only directed towards a small percentage of Taiwan's university libraries. Without an adequate quantity of volumes in the library collections of any region or country, resource sharing cannot be realized.