Abstract

Since the year 2000, the Danish population has had access to searching and requesting the material held by all Danish libraries (academic, special and university libraries as well as public libraries) through bibliotek.dk (http://bibliotek.dk). Judging by the number of users and number of requests performed, it has been a huge success.

But for the libraries – who are the suppliers of material and manpower for fulfilling the requests – the first years with bibliotek.dk have been somewhat cumbersome. Because the library users actually do request books and other materials: in 2006: 2.2 mio. loan requests! The user of bibliotek.dk just requests the material, he does not have to bother with which library possesses the material: if it is held in his own local library, he is directed to the record in the local OPAC, and he can place the request there. But if it is not held by his library, the request was – until recently! – handled more or less manually by the library staff.

Over the past years the focus of bibliotek.dk has been on:

• Ease of use for end users, e.g. through the use of a FRBR-like display and requesting facilities.
• Effectiveness in delivery of library material, e.g. through the establishment of a nationwide transportation service of library materials.
• Effectiveness in handling requests from end users through: as a replacement for manual handling of the requests, the system performs automated ILL-requests (this will be launched spring 2007). The request is placed at the library that can and will deliver the material first. All of this is based on the use of z39.50-standards for search, retrieve, holdings information and automated ILL-ordering.
• Local influence and agreement: the entire system is based on the contribution of the local libraries, their systems and employees. The local libraries keep control of local ILL-policy through the editing of settings and parameters for the ILL-functions in the central system.

In our paper we will give a short survey of the bibliotek.dk-system, seen from the users perspective and from the local libraries point of view. We will demonstrate and discuss the above-mentioned concepts of effectiveness and automation, and we will sum up the Danish experiences with the automation of end-user loan requests in the national union catalogue so far.