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THE EXTRAORDINARY GROWTH OF INITIATIVES and programmes of co-operation at both the local and international levels is surely one of the most significant developments in the field of library science of the past few years. We know that such co-operation is not a recent practice and that precedents can be found in library history. For instance, supposedly there were even exchanges of documents between the two most famous libraries of the ancient world, Pergamum and the legendary Alexandria, thus demonstrating how a spirit of cooperation could prevail even between two institutions often cited as the epitome of rivalry between libraries. Leaving aside its basis in historical fact, this anecdote exemplifies library behaviour in the century that has recently ended: continual oscillation between collaboration and competition, openness and isolation, with the latter often predominating (especially at certain latitudes, where ideological control or simply bureaucratic inertia has often overcome the needs of cultural development and access to information).
