Researchers will wish to visit libraries if libraries can provide effective services, and universities will wish to fund libraries if they are seen as necessary for maintaining the universities' goals in financial, political and quality of service terms. Document delivery is seen by many as one of the main solutions to the problems which now begin to affect the scholarly communication process. Document delivery seems to provide something for everyone. Researchers are able to make their research results more accessible, and can find out more quickly and more easily about the research of others and obtain the documents which describe that research. Librarians can supplement their holdings, use document delivery to assist the holdings rationalisation process, provide better services, give themselves an extra role, and even make money.
Universities can provide improved services at lower costs.
Before we can present document delivery as the solution to the problems which face us, as the great alternative to collection development, we need to be clearer about the issues involved. Librarians find it very difficult to develop a policy which achieves the right balance between access and holdings against an apparently ever more difficult financial background. Large collections are still too often the crude measure of effectiveness. In the UK for example, many publications describing universities list the size of the library's collection as the only measure of its quality. There is strong pressure from academic staff for the maintenance of large collections, but this often seems to be for reasons of prestige rather than quality of service.