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The reviews of interlending and document supply appearing regularly in this journal are themselves reviewed to give a world picture of interlending in the years 1975 to 1985. National and international lending have increased. National and international systems have been planned and performance improved in some countries. Others have seen little progress. Union catalogues and subject specialist collections have their part to play, but the greatest development has been in networks, particularly OCLC. Interlending is still beset by questions of the costs of services, of charging and copyright. Developments in new technology have still to make much impact on document supply, although various projects in this area are already in hand.

The picture of international lending is one of diversity: different systems, methods of application, restrictions, methods of payment etc. Problems caused by this diversity are compounded by language difficulties, length of supply times and lack of information regarding the progress of requests. Developments in electronic technology will probably aid the smoother running of international lending, particularly the growth of electronic databases with accompanying electronic mail systems.

A survey on the relative importance of various library functions, including interlibrary lending, introduces this review. Various national library systems are considered, with emphasis on the degree of centralization involved. A central lending collection is proposed for France. Both decentralized and centralized solutions are put forward for India and Japan. The latter also claims an international role. Unplanned decentralized systems in the Netherlands and Belgium are described and the planned decentralized system in the Federal Republic of Germany is defended. The accuracy of location information in the USA is considered briefly. A number of items on interlending in Australia are reviewed, with particular attention to the effects of the new voucher payment system.

This paper is about the British Library's free Internet access service, British Library Net, launched in September 1999 as the first ISP by a public sector body. The paper explores the rationale behind the development of the service, the work involved in both its creation and ongoing development and takes a look at future trends in the ISP market. The contents of this article had their genesis in a presentation given by Brian Kefford of the British Library at the Public Sector Online 2000 conference.

The proceedings of a conference on the future of union catalogues, the recent Unesco guidelines on the compilation of union catalogues of serials and a book on future access to information and documents in France are discussed.

This review is concerned mainly with papers on new technological developments in document supply. It begins with a paper that looks at the likely effects of new technology on libraries and publishing. The Hermes and Apollo projects, and a broad systems view on new technology and the supply of ‘separates’ are discussed. Three discussion papers from the Library of Congress Network Advisory Committee on present position and long‐term future of document delivery in the USA are considered. Finally, two specific developments — the Chemical Abstracts Service Document Delivery Service and the OCLC/IAC electronic document delivery system — are reported.

Topics covered in this literature review include: on‐line document ordering, electronic mail, an on‐line network in South Africa, and document supply in Austria; the provision and supply of documents in Scandinavia; interlending statistics from France; national interlending system in Brazil; the relationship between collection size and interlending demand; the use of interlending data as a guide to acquisition; and some broader thoughts on the function and economics of interlending.

Surveys of interlending in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia are reported, together with an examination of journal acquisition in American libraries. Interlibrary lending in developing countries is considered and attention is drawn to the importance of interlending in national library systems and in Universal Availability of Publications. Resource sharing in the USA is reviewed at some length, including discussion of interlending fees and finance, and diverse solutions to the growth of interlending from central stock reserves to on‐line networks and commercial sector involvement. Finally, microform lending centres, telefacsimile and digital text transmission are briefly considered.

Eleven different studies of interlending efficiency at regional level or in individual libraries are summarized. A network of academic libraries in NW Canada relies on its largest members. Problems at the national level in Denmark are reported briefly, along with studies of interloan requests made by two university libraries. In the GDR, a general library looks at both incoming and outgoing requests. The latest annual report on interlending in Northrhine‐Westphalia (FRG) is discussed, together with a study of bibliographically‐unchecked requests. The Hungarian Central Technical Library examines its growing role as a supplier of interlibrary loans. Three reports from different areas of the USA concentrate mainly on supply times, and an account is given of one joint venture that failed.

The principles of national interlending put forward by Line and Vickers and those for international lending developed by the IFLA Office for International Lending are considered in the Belgian context. A report on statistics in French university libraries and a survey of interlibrary borrowing by Antwerp University Library are summarized. Attention is drawn to some aspects of interlibrary loan costs. Various aspects of union catalogues are reported: the proposed German Union Catalogue (Deutscher Gesamtkatalog); union catalogue automation in France; the impact of the OCLC interlending subsystem on one US library; and a union list of serials/co‐operative acquisition scheme. Brief accounts are given of document delivery in South Africa, the use of telecopiers in a small network, and standardization of interlibrary loan procedures. A handbook on international lending in socialist countries and three reports of relevance to interlending in the Netherlands are mentioned.