The world is passing through a revolution in the growth of information and its dissemination. The number of titles being published the world over has been increasing phenomenally. Since the publication of 42 lines Bible in 1452, more than three crore titles have been published all over the world. Currently, about five lakh books, one lakh periodicals, lakhs of patents, thousands of standards and numerous other types of documents are being published every year. It is hardly possible for any individual library to buy every book and journal and meet varied demands of the user community. No library can possibly provide efficient services with its age old manual operations.

The use of computers in libraries has been of great help in the acquisition, serial control, cataloguing, circulation besides keeping tracks of stocks and users. Through the use of computers and other communication facilities, sharing of resources is becoming more and more important and thus the inter-dependence on the other libraries to meet the ever increasing users’ demands. Library Networks have been established for co-operation and resource sharing among libraries. In India, the process of modernization of libraries and establishment of library networks arrived on the scene quite late. Efforts were made by NISSAT to help establish CALIBNET in 1986, DELNET in 1988 and others like ADINET, PUNENET, BONET subsequently. The UGC established INFLIBNET in 1988. INSDOC supported the formation of MALIBNET in 1993. Besides these networks, several library networks came into reality and now provide a centralized database of library information, to be accessed by its user libraries for the purpose of resource sharing.