New Module for Secure Electronic Resource Sharing in Turkey

Abstract

ANKOS (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) has been established in 2000 to enable collaborative efforts among university libraries towards an increase in the support provided by libraries to education and research. ANKOS aimed to provide access to the largest possible e-content in optimal cost for university and research libraries in Turkey. This initiative has shared the investment costs for e-resources within the “economy of scale” paradigm, and has enabled access to the global information network for the Turkish community of academicians and students. ANKOS Collaboration Group has been formed in 2006 to lead document delivery and resource sharing activities among member libraries in Turkey. A major outcome of this group is the KITS (Interlibrary Loan Tracking System) that has started its operation in 2008. KITS is developed to manage all resource sharing processes in an online platform. Since its inception, KITS has continually increased its member size and operation volume. According to feedback by ILL librarians and to meet the requests supplied by them, KITS has been under continuous development. Recently, a new module has been implemented that realizes sharing of electronic documents: Electronic Document Delivery module is the subject of this paper.