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Introduction
India, the largest democracy in the world with an estimated population of 114 million, has more than 100,000 libraries comprising academic libraries, public libraries, special libraries and libraries attached to the research and development institutions, government departments and ministries, etc. ICT has brought a paradigm change in the functionality but this change is not uniform across all Indian libraries. On the one hand the country is proud to have the most sophisticated libraries with ISO certifications and the implementation of modern tools and technologies; on the other hand, we do encounter the challenges of providing a better infrastructure in the form of PCs and internet connectivity in the libraries that are still striving hard to acquire the necessary hardware and internet connectivity. The adoption of standards, retrospective conversion work and the adoption of suitable library software packages continue to be the major concerns for libraries and library and information science professionals.
In this diverse and changing situation DELNET has been able to establish itself as an effective, operational resource sharing library network in India. The network whose journey started as a city based library network in 1988 has emerged as a major operational library network, not only in India but also South Asia, connecting more than 1597 libraries in 30 States and Union Territories (UT) in India and seven other countries, see the Appendix, Figure A1 for details. The network is going from strength to strength, with rapidly growing union catalogues, wider coverage of libraries from varied disciplines, growing numbers of users and horizontal and vertical expansion in its services to members. This article highlights the pioneering work being done by DELNET-Developing Library Network (formerly Delhi Library Network) which is a non-governmental, non-profit making organisation with financial support and telecommunication facilities from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India and located in its own building in the well known academic environment of Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi. It should be emphasized that DELNET does not receive any government funding and is based on a self-sustainable model and is considered to be a role model for other library networks especially those in developing nations. A survey has also been conducted by the author to assess the utilisation of DELNET resources in...