Written from a global perspective, this book reviews sharing of library resources on a global scale. With expanded discovery tools and massive digitization projects, the rich and extensive holdings of the world’s libraries are more visible now than at any time in the past. Advanced communication and transmission technologies, along with improved international standards, present a means for the sharing of library resources around the globe. Despite these significant improvements, a number of challenges remain. Global Resource Sharing provides librarians and library managers with a comprehensive background in and summary of the issues involved in global resource sharing. Analyses current and future environments for international resource sharing, including past research and discussions Provides an international perspective on a global library issue Includes examples of successful and innovative global resource sharing initiatives

Annotation Aimed at professionals within Library and Information Services (LIS), this book is about sharing of library resources on an international scale from a global perspective. With expanded discovery tools and massive digitization projects, the rich and extensive holdings of the world¿s libraries are more visible than at any other time in the past. Advanced communication and transmission technologies along with improved international standards provide a means for the sharing of library resources around the globe. Despite these significant improvements, a number of challenges remain. Librarians and library managers will be provided with a background in and summary of the issues involved in global resource sharing.

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Marshall Breeding’s new Library Technology Report explores technologies and strategies for sharing resources, helping you streamline workflows and improve resource-sharing services by covering key strategies like interlibrary loan, consortial borrowing, document delivery, and shared collections.

This book analyses the status and prospects of the global governance of Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) in the aftermath of 2010’s Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD’s initial 1992 framework of global ABS governance established the objective of sharing the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources fairly between countries and communities. Since then, ABS has been a contested issue in international politics – not least due to the failure of effective implementation of the original CBD framework. The Nagoya Protocol therefore aims to improve and enhance this framework. Compared to the slow rate of progress on climate change, it has been considered a major achievement of global environmental governance, but it has also been coined a ‘masterpiece of ambiguity’. This book analyses the role of a variety of actors in the emergence of the Nagoya Protocol and provides an up-to-date assessment of the core features of the architecture of global ABS governance. This book offers a central resource regarding ABS governance for those working on and interested in global environmental governance. This is achieved by focusing on two broad themes of the wider research agenda on global environmental governance, namely architecture and agency. Furthermore, individual chapter contributions relate and link ABS governance to other prominent debates in the field, such as institutional complexes, compliance, market-based approaches, EU leadership, the role of small states, the role of non-state actors and more. Partly due to its seeming technical complexity, ABS governance has so far not been at the centre of attention of scholars and practitioners of global environmental governance. In this book, care is taken to provide an accessible account of key functional features of the governance system which enables non-specialists to gain a grasp on the main issues involved, allowing the issue of ABS governance to move centre-stage and be more fully recognised in discussions on global environmental governance.