AGRICOLA IND 92017548; Presented at the VIII World Congress of IAALD, May, 1990, Budapest, Hungary, The design of a Cooperative Acquisition Programme (CAP) for a regional network - ZALINET - in China is discussed. The model is presented both descriptively and quantitatively for the purpose of design and planning. The types of participating libraries and potential network users are identified in the following sectors: research, education, production, government department, and marketing. A descriptive model has been worked out for the distribution of information resources. The assignment of responsibility for collection and allocation of resources should be based on: the assessment of the collection strength and subject biases of the libraries and information centres; the identification of geographical characteristics of information distribution; the differentiation of sector characteristics of information resource distribution; the identification of the resources already available, both human and material and estimation of future potential. In the descriptive model, the important elements of the design issues of CAP in SALONET are proposed. The mathematical model intends to work out the optimum solution about total network coverage, overlapping degree of titles among libraries, and duplication of titles within the libraries. The CEB model should be able to help the network manager decide how to carry out the cooperative acquisition program cost-effectively.
