Logistics is everywhere. During the recent Olympics, DHL and UPS were heavy advertizers. Recently, UPS has been advertizing that its role is to ‘synchronize’ companies.
It seems to me that logistics is a significant part of what libraries do, they synchronize the need for and the supply of research and learning materials.
Logistics is about moving information, materials and services through a network cost-effectively. Resource sharing is supported by a library logistics apparatus. The emerging e-resource discovery to delivery chain, tied together with resolution services, is a logistics challenge. Many of the e-resource management issues are like supply-chain management issues.
In the library community, we tend to resist the vocabulary of business or other domains. That said, Library logistics is growing on me!
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