Major Services Offered by Library Networks: From Cataloguing to Digital Archives

When you search a single library catalogue and instantly discover that the rare book you need is sitting in a university 1,500 kilometres away, and you can have it delivered to your desk, you are witnessing the quiet power of library networks. These networks connect thousands of libraries into a single cooperative system, transforming isolated collections into a shared national resource. Far more than simple directories, they offer a structured range of services that touch every stage of the research process, from finding a document to preserving it for future generations. Understanding these services reveals how modern libraries punch far above their individual weight.

What library networks actually do 🔗

A library network is a group of libraries that agree to cooperate, pool resources, and share infrastructure so their members can do collectively what none could afford alone. In India, networks like INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network) and DELNET (Developing Library Network) have built this cooperation into national systems. DELNET alone connects more than 10,000 institutions across 28 states and 8 union territories.

The driving force behind these networks is resource sharing. When financial pressures squeeze both government and private institutions, no single library can buy every book, subscribe to every journal, or digitise every document. The solution is to share. The services these networks offer all flow from this single principle, and they fall into four broad areas: cooperative cataloguing, document delivery, electronic resource subscription, and digital preservation.

Union catalogues and shared cataloguing 🔗

A union catalogue is a single combined catalogue listing the holdings of many libraries. Instead of searching dozens of separate catalogues to find a book, a user searches one database and sees which member libraries hold it. INFLIBNET’s IndCat functions as a national online union catalogue of books, theses, and journals held in major university libraries across the country. DELNET maintains its own large union catalogues, including a union catalogue of books holding crores of records and a union list of current periodicals running into lakhs of titles.

Why cooperative cataloguing matters 🔗

Cataloguing a single book is detailed, skilled work. A librarian must record the author, title, subject headings, classification number, and other metadata according to strict standards. When every library catalogues the same popular book independently, the same effort is repeated thousands of times across the country. This is enormous duplication.

Shared cataloguing solves this. Under this model, one library creates a high-quality catalogue record, and other libraries simply copy it into their own systems, adjusting only local details like the call number. INFLIBNET added copy-cataloguing and online cataloguing functions to IndCat precisely to make this possible. One of the network’s core stated goals is to optimise resource use through shared cataloguing and to avoid duplication in acquisition wherever possible.

The benefits are concrete. Cooperative cataloguing saves staff time, reduces costs, and improves consistency because records follow shared standards. It also speeds up the process of getting new books onto shelves and into search systems. For smaller colleges with limited professional staff, access to a pool of ready-made, high-quality records is a genuine lifeline.

Document delivery and interlibrary loan 🔗

Finding a document in a union catalogue is only half the battle. The next step is actually getting it into the user’s hands, and that is where interlibrary loan (ILL) and document delivery come in. Interlibrary loan is the service that lets a patron of one library borrow material physically held by another library. After receiving a request, the borrowing library identifies a lending library that holds the item, the item is sent physically or electronically, and the borrowing library passes it to the user.

The terms can be confusing because they overlap. Broadly, document delivery often refers to supplying copies of articles or book chapters, frequently in electronic form, while interlibrary loan refers to lending the physical item itself. In practice, libraries and professional bodies like IFLA and the American Library Association use the terms almost interchangeably, treating both as forms of resource sharing.

How the request workflow operates 🔗

The process follows a clear sequence. A user identifies a needed resource through a union catalogue or database search. They submit a request through their home library. The request is forwarded to a member library that holds the item, which then supplies it. DELNET offers exactly this, allowing members to register ILL requests online for books and to send requests by email for journal articles and resources not found in the union catalogues. INFLIBNET runs document delivery through its J-Gate Plus@e-ShodhSindhu gateway, which provides article-level access to journals subscribed under the consortium and by its ILL centres.

The value here is access to hard-to-find resources. A student in a small town can read a rare monograph, an old dissertation, or a specialised journal article that their own institution never purchased. This is particularly important for research scholars whose work depends on obscure or out-of-print materials. By maximising the use of existing collections across the whole network, ILL turns every member’s shelves into a resource that all members can draw upon.

Subscription to electronic resources through consortia 🔗

One of the most financially significant services is the bulk subscription to electronic journals and databases through a consortium. A consortium is a group of libraries that negotiate and purchase subscriptions together rather than individually. The logic is simple: a publisher will offer a far better price to a buyer representing 200 universities than to a single institution negotiating alone.

India’s flagship example is e-ShodhSindhu, launched in December 2015 by the Ministry of Education. It was formed by merging three earlier consortia: the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, the N-LIST programme for colleges, and the INDEST-AICTE Consortium. Executed by the INFLIBNET Centre, it provides current and archival access to more than 10,000 core and peer-reviewed journals along with bibliographic and factual databases to universities, colleges, and centrally funded technical institutions.

The role of consortia in reducing costs 🔗

The central advantage of the consortium model is cost reduction through pooled procurement. By negotiating collectively, member institutions secure heavily discounted subscription rates that would be impossible to obtain alone. According to the IMPRI policy analysis, before e-ShodhSindhu, institutions accessed resources through separate, fragmented consortia with insufficient collaboration and duplicated effort. Merging them enabled centralised procurement, stronger negotiation with publishers, and wider institutional coverage.

The savings extend beyond price. Consortia reduce the administrative burden on each library because negotiation and licensing are handled centrally. They can also negotiate better licensing terms, including archival access and favourable user rights. The college component, N-LIST, illustrates the reach this creates, providing thousands of e-journals and a vast collection of e-books to thousands of colleges that could never have afforded such access independently.

This model is now scaling to its logical conclusion. In January 2025, the Government of India launched the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme, with an allocation of ₹6,000 crore over three years, to provide nationwide access to thousands of journals. The e-ShodhSindhu programme has been subsumed into this larger initiative, marking the country’s biggest commitment yet to the principle that knowledge access should be shared and centrally funded rather than fragmented.

Digital libraries and archives 🔗

The fourth major service area is the building of shared digital repositories for long-term preservation. A digital library is a managed collection of digital objects, organised so they can be stored, searched, retrieved, and preserved over time. Library networks are ideally placed to build these because a central repository serves everyone at once and removes the burden of preservation from individual institutions.

Shodhganga and the preservation of research 🔗

India’s standout example is Shodhganga, a national digital repository of electronic theses and dissertations maintained by the INFLIBNET Centre. Before it existed, valuable doctoral research was scattered, often inaccessible, and at risk of being lost. Shodhganga changed this by creating a single open-access platform where research scholars deposit their PhD theses. It now aggregates work from hundreds of universities, and in May 2025 it crossed the milestone of its 600,000th thesis upload, a remarkable indicator of its scale.

The technical foundation matters for preservation. Shodhganga is built on DSpace, an open-source repository software, and it follows internationally recognised interoperability standards such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and a qualified version of the Dublin Core metadata schema. These standards let different repositories exchange and harvest each other’s records, so a thesis held in one university repository can be discovered through a central search system.

Why shared repositories ensure long-term access 🔗

Building repositories cooperatively delivers several benefits. They guarantee digital preservation, conserving academic work for future generations in formats that remain accessible. They promote open access, allowing anyone to read and download research freely, which raises the visibility of a nation’s scholarship. They also support academic integrity; Shodhganga was partly created to address plagiarism, and the INFLIBNET Centre runs a related plagiarism-detection initiative for universities.

Repositories also support distributed preservation. Universities with sufficient infrastructure can maintain their own repositories and use the central platform as a backup archive, while the central server harvests metadata from all of them to provide unified access. This combination of local control and central coordination is preservation built to last.

How these services work together 🔗

These four service areas are not separate silos. They form a connected chain. A user searches the union catalogue, locates an item, requests it through document delivery, and accesses subscribed e-resources or archived theses through the network’s digital platforms. Cooperative cataloguing makes the catalogue possible. The catalogue makes document delivery possible. Consortia make affordable e-resources possible. Repositories make preservation and open access possible. Together, they convert thousands of independent libraries into one cooperative knowledge system that serves students and researchers far better than any institution could alone.

What do you think? If your college library could only invest heavily in one of these four services, which would create the most value for students and researchers? And as schemes like One Nation One Subscription centralise access nationally, what role should individual library networks continue to play?

References

1. https://inflibnet.ac.in/
2. http://delnet.in/index.html
3. https://www.academia.edu/92462754/Information_and_Library_Network_INFLIBNET_A_Boon_for_Higher_Education_in_India
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan
5. https://libguides.ala.org/Interlibraryloans
6. https://www.inflibnet.ac.in/downloads/brochure/eshodhsindhu.pdf
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-ShodhSindhu
8. https://www.impriindia.com/insights/ess-democratize-education-access/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Nation_One_Subscription
10. https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/
11. https://en.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/education/interactive-resources/shodhganga-a-reservoir-of-indian-theses