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Progress in Europe between 1973 and 1978 is reviewed mainly in the context of the LIBER Seminar on International Interlibrary Lending held in Florence in 1978. The Danish interlending system is considered separately. Attention is given to a theoretical on‐line system in Belgium and actual on‐line methods in the USA and recent articles from the USA, especially on the National Periodicals Center, are presented. Articles on developments in Scotland, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand are reviewed. Finally payment for loans and the effects of copyright legislation are considered.

Literature supply in the Federal Republic of Germany is organized on a decentralized, co‐operative basis; the bulk of requests submitted is handled by libraries located in one interlending area. The supply of literature in the fields of technology, medicine, agriculture and economics is the special responsibility of 4 central subject libraries, while the humanities are covered by 17 special subject collections housed in various university libraries. There has been a significant growth in interlibrary loan requests in the last 10 years and the traffic is currently around 2.2 million requests per year.

The Federal Republic of Germany exemplifies a decentralised co‐operative system of interlending. Regional library co‐operation is based on seven union catalogues. The rapidly increasing demands for literature provision require new structures and techniques. Data processing and COM are therefore utilised. A computerised system for locating periodicals is used via the National Serials Data Base which is maintained at the German Library Institute in West Berlin in co‐operation with the State Library. Input to this national referral system is provided by the regional systems, together with information contained in the continuing conventional periodical indexes, GAZS and GZS at the State Library in Berlin. Substantial improvements have resulted from the ability of libraries to borrow direct. The next logical step in the development of an efficient document delivery service would be to cover monographs in a similar way to serials. Discussion about this has been put into concrete terms in a planning paper of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. This states that the establishment of independent regional library centres with their own computers is a basic condition for building regional networks; instead of centralisation, close co‐operation between the regions is seen as appropriate.

The picture of international lending is one of diversity: different systems, methods of application, restrictions, methods of payment etc. Problems caused by this diversity are compounded by language difficulties, length of supply times and lack of information regarding the progress of requests. Developments in electronic technology will probably aid the smoother running of international lending, particularly the growth of electronic databases with accompanying electronic mail systems.

This paper seeks to look into Gabriel – the Worldwide web server for those European national libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), providing a single point of access on the internet for the retrieval of information about their functions, services and collections. Above all, it serves as a gateway to their online services. Three national libraries emerged as natural partners in setting up a pilot project on behalf of the CENL membership as a whole

Following the success of the Portico prototype, a development project was launched with the aim of creating a well‐founded service and building up coverage of British Library services and collections by adding home pages for directorates and departments.

The service has been developed through an international project involving the national libraries of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Finland and Germany.

Gabriel has the potential of becoming a model for collaboration in the networking field across a wide geographical area and among diverse institutions.

Gabriel is the World Wide Web server for those European national libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), providing a single point of access on the Internet for the retrieval of information about their functions, services and collections. Above all, it serves as a gateway to their online services. The service has been developed through an international project involving the national libraries of the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Finland and Germany. Gabriel has the potential of becoming a model for collaboration in the networking field across a wide geographical area and among diverse institutions.

As document supply grows in volume and importance it becomes more necessary to measure its performance. Nearly all measures are relative — over time, across countries, and between systems; they should therefore be consistent and comparable. The main measures are: fill rate (broken down by subject, form and date); speed (broken down into the various processes involved in document supply); user satisfaction (because users' needs may not be articulated); and costs. There may be trade‐offs between different measures (eg speed and costs). Any measurement system must be practical. Most data will be collected by sampling, but well designed automated systems in future should enable better measures to be calculated with less effort.

A survey on the relative importance of various library functions, including interlibrary lending, introduces this review. Various national library systems are considered, with emphasis on the degree of centralization involved. A central lending collection is proposed for France. Both decentralized and centralized solutions are put forward for India and Japan. The latter also claims an international role. Unplanned decentralized systems in the Netherlands and Belgium are described and the planned decentralized system in the Federal Republic of Germany is defended. The accuracy of location information in the USA is considered briefly. A number of items on interlending in Australia are reviewed, with particular attention to the effects of the new voucher payment system.

Who knows what scholarly gems lie behind the iron doors of research library stacks in what used to be called “East” Germany? Today anyone with a network connection and a Web browser can know at least some of the answers, thanks to a major automation effort.