The British Library

56 EE September 1988 The British Library"s Document Supply Centre (BLDSC) at Boston Spa in West Yorkshire houses the largest collection of readily accessible material in the world. It was set up primarily to meet the needs of Britain"s scientists and researchers for global information. At the same time it can supply almost any document, article or report to academic or commercial researchers overseas. In fact, overseas customers - 7000 from 144 countries - now outnumber United Kingdom registered users, and overall demand from abroad is increasing by around 5% a year. The centre handles in all one enquiry every two seconds, lend- ing or supplying photocopies or microfiche duplicates from a stock of 7 million books, journals, reports and theses. The journals listing alone contains over 10,000 titles on chemistry and chemical engineering, 8,000 on biomedical research, 30,000 on other biosciences and over 40,000 on engineering. As a depository for all European Community documents,...