NUFFIC was founded by Dutch universities in 1952 in order to stimulate and encourage international cooperation in higher education. Under its long-term programme of support to higher education and research in developing countries NUFFIC, since 1983, has been operating the Netherlands Periodicals Project (NPP).

Services offered: coordination, donation.

Materials offered: back runs of journals, current subscriptions, used books.

The NPP desk is familiar with the needs for scientific literature (primarily scientific journals) of a number of university libraries in the South. The project is aimed at the well-directed acquisition of these periodicals from libraries of Dutch institutions for education and research and at matching the material offered with the requests of a selected group of institutions in developing countries. In this sense the project is entirely request-led.

The project also runs a "delayed subscription" service with which it aims to be able to guarantee the donation of specific journals to fixed recipients.

The majority of the NPP shipments go to destinations in Africa but relations are also kept with universities and research institutions in Asia and Latin America. For institutions to become recipients in the project they necessarily have to be a counterpart in one of the long-term programmes for international cooperation in higher education funded by the Netherlands Ministry for Development Cooperation. In reality the project works with a more or less fixed core group of around thirty institutions. The most important counterparts are situated in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Eritrea, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mozambique, Philippines, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia.

Dispatch is done by sea-mail and distribution is handled in-country by Dutch embassies where possible. The recipients themselves are responsible for distribution of the goods. Recipients are asked to return an evaluation form that is sent to them around the date of arrival of the shipment. This is done to be able to check the contents with the project administration and to get certainty about arrival of the goods.

In 1994, thirty-six shipments were sent to 19 different countries comprising a volume of about 50 cubic meters. In the first nine months of 1995, thirty shipments were sent to nine different countries comprising a volume of 40 cubic meters.

As of July 1996 a redefined proposal will be carried out for a two-year period. The emphasis will be on strengthening the (university) libraries of the counterpart institutions in collection development and improvement of the availability of information through various means.