Document Delivery Task Force

Interim Progress Report

Members: Sherri Jones (chair), Carol Brach, Thurston Miller, Carole Pilkinton, and Kathy Ryan-Zeugner

LEC Liaison: Nigel Butterwick

Charge

A key role for the University of Notre Dame Libraries is to provide timely and appropriate access to the information resources needed by faculty, staff, and students to enable them to meet their teaching, learning and research goals. In the past, heavy reliance was placed on the acquisition of appropriate printed and other resources in fulfilling this role. With the increasing volume of publication and escalating costs associated with academic publishing, a new model of providing timely and appropriate access to information is required. Such a model will rely on a combination of purchasing material for permanent addition to the library's collections and document delivery to meet specific requirements within an appropriate timescale.

In June 2004, a Document Delivery Task Force was created and charged with identifying the critical features required for a successful document delivery service and then selecting one (or more) commercial document delivery system(s) to use during a trial period to test the service. The task force is responsible for planning and implementing the trial (pilot) service as well as determining the length and time for the pilot project. As part of their planning process, the task force will identify any restrictions placed on the service during the test period, such as price limit per article, limits for number of articles requested, patron eligibility for the service, department restrictions, etc.

The task force will also be responsible for assessing the service after the trial period to determine whether the service provided support for active research in a cost effective way. Factors to consider in evaluating the service include:

• Usage patterns across disciplines and user status
• Users' perception of the value of the service across different disciplines
• Comparison of the cost of document delivery versus the cost of journal subscriptions
• Document quality
• Analysis of orders placed according to several measures:

                   •  Journals having five or more articles requested

                   •  Percentage of orders for articles from cancelled journals

                   •  Average cost per article

                   •  Average turnaround time for article compared to turnaround time for ILL

                   •  Degree to which turnaround time met users' needs and expectations

As the task force began investigating the different models of document delivery, several questions arose:  

• Do we offer mediated user access or unmediated access? What do we mean by unmediated access?

• Do we use one commercial supplier such as Ingenta or should we rely on multiple suppliers, including going directly to commercial publishers?  

• Do we want access to be as seamless as possible, depending on vendor requirements, or do we want to purposely impose barriers to lower the number of requests? For example, should we charge a minimal fee of $1.00 for each article ordered? Also, is the necessity of searching and accessing an article through a vendor site a use barrier in itself?

• If we offer a library-mediated service, should the service be centralized or decentralized?  

• Who will be eligible for document delivery?  What criteria will we use for eligibility?  

• What kind of restrictions, if any, will we impose?  Will we impose spending limits or price controls? Should we consider different layers or tiers of requests?  

• What kind of turn-around time do we want? 3 days? 24 hours? Instantaneous?  

• What kind of technical support will we need?  

• What types of statistics and management reports will we need? Who will be responsible for maintaining statistics?

• What impact will the purchase of ILLiad have on document delivery?

Since June, the Task Force members have been carefully considering the answers to these questions by reading the journal literature on document delivery, talking to commercial vendor representatives and colleagues at other institutions, gathering information on existing document delivery practices at the ND Libraries, etc., in order to make informed decisions.

Mediated or unmediated?

A document delivery service can be set up with many different variations depending on the amount of  library resources (i.e. funding) and level of service you want to provide to your users. It can be a complement to the existent Interlibrary Loan service or it can simply replace it.

Basically, there are three major variations:

1. Mediated – not subsidized

This is a service where the users' requests are filtered through the ILL office or branch library before being filled via a commercial document supplier. Both the sending of the requests and the receiving of the articles are done through the ILL/branch staff. A fee is imposed on the user for the articles.

      2. Mediated- library subsidized

Same as above but the library pays for the articles

     2a.   Mediated in a more centralized and  fast-track  method, where speed of mediated service is top priority. Possibly facilitated through SFX to focus on specific titles or publishers. This plan would also help us centralize information about availability and efficiency from selected sources.

      3. Unmediated – library subsidized

Several terms are used in the literature to describe the online ordering and delivery of articles to the user without library mediation, with “unmediated document delivery” being the most common. The degree of intervention by the library in the process can vary. Some libraries choose to have minimal involvement, where, after initial training, the user is expected to contact the supplier directly regarding registering for the service, placing orders, resolving problems, etc.  Here the users' requests are not only sent directly to the commercial provider but the receiving of them is done at their desktop or personal fax machine, thus bypassing the ILL/branch office totally. Most libraries, however, choose to be more involved with the process but any involvement is often transparent to the user. With a library subsidized model, no article fee is imposed on the user. Two examples of unmediated library subsidized ordering are the CISTI Source/SUMO Service at McGill University and the Documents Direct Service at Leeds University.

A crucial goal of the pilot project will be to explore the financial impact on the library's budget of ordering articles directly from a commercial document provider versus using the standard interlibrary loan process, especially if an “unmediated/library subsidized” model is tried. After completion of the trial project, the task force will make a recommendation as to whether the service should be discontinued, extended, or modified, as well as the level of funding needed to implement and support the service on an ongoing basis. Questions to consider are:  

• Who will manage document delivery funds? What funds will be used to pay for document delivery? Will we have one central account or various subject accounts?  

• Should there be different levels of services for different disciplines? Do some disciplines benefit more from a subsidized document delivery service than others?

Background

For several years, the branch libraries have been using commercial document delivery suppliers to fill interlibrary loan requests (a mediated/library funded model) instead of relying solely on traditional interlibrary loan. Using commercial document delivery has allowed the branches to receive articles within a few days as opposed to the week or more it takes to receive articles via interlibrary loan. This is especially important in the sciences where the journal literature is of the highest importance to faculty, students, and researchers and where currency of information and immediacy of needs are critical. Furthermore, allowing branch library staff to fill the transactions directly through commercial suppliers has reduced the workload of the Interlibrary Loan staff faced with an ever growing number of requests. In the Life Sciences Library, for example, less that ¼ of their ILL requests are filled by Interlibrary Loan staff via traditional interlibrary loan with the remainder of requests filled by Life Sciences Library staff using commercial suppliers.

The heaviest users of commercial document delivery among the branch libraries are the Life Sciences & Engineering Libraries. During the 2002/2003 Fiscal Year, a total of 1414 branch requests were filled using commercial document delivery, with the Life Sciences and Engineering Library accounting for 1349 (95%) of these requests.  During the fiscal year 2003/2004, the Life Sciences Library filled an average of 55 requests per month while the Engineering Library filled an average of 71 requests per month. The most popular commercial vendors used for document delivery among the branches during the past several years include the British Library Inside Service, Ingenta (formerly CARL Uncover), CISTI, and the Linda Hall Library. Below is a summary of the usage of commercial document delivery by the branches from 2001 to 2004.

Advantages of commercial document delivery

• The commercial supplier's compliance to the copyright law makes the transactions of documents easier. The CONTU guidelines state that for interlibrary loan purposes, a library may not receive more than 5 photocopies from a copyrighted journal title published in the last five years. This guideline of five can be bypassed by ordering articles through commercial document delivery.  

• Many vendors offer the table of contents of journals present in their collections, which helps to verify the citations before placing the order.   

• Faster turnaround time. Turnaround time is a traditional measure used to evaluate the quality of service in ILL departments. Studies show that faculty will readily accept document delivery in lieu of journal subscriptions when the service is marketed effectively and meets promised expectations in terms of turn-around time. [1]

• Lowering labor costs  

• Commercial suppliers offer the possibility for users to order articles on a self-serve basis  

• Colors and resolutions of graphics in scientific articles are often critical to users. These features generally lose their qualities in faxed or photocopied articles.

On the other hand, the major weaknesses of interlibrary loan are the labor-intensive nature of the service, including staff time needed for copyright tracking, charging and payment of fees; the unavailability of materials; slow turnaround time; and the uncertainty as to whether the request will be filled or not.

Document Delivery Costs

Library literature is replete with articles about the use and cost of document delivery in academic libraries, especially in the sciences. More recently, there have been many reports of libraries describing their experiences with using library-subsidized commercial document delivery as an alternative to journal subscriptions. For example, a study done at The Louisiana State University (LSU) Libraries over a four year period utilizing document delivery and electronic access to expand collections in the sciences and social sciences showed that “it is more economical to use commercial document delivery for high-cost low use journals than to subscribe to them”. [2] Similarly, results of an unmediated document delivery project at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries showed that “paying per article is less expensive than subscribing to costly titles or to titles with few users.” [3] A research project at the University of Montana Library found that “dramatic savings were realized during the trial period with the document delivery over the purchase of traditional subscriptions. [4]

Costs for obtaining articles from commercial document delivery usually run from $30-$50 per article and usually includes the cost of copyright/royalty fees. Obviously, the cost varies depending on method of ordering, delivery options, base price of the vendor, and copyright. When you consider the fact that many libraries charge for photocopying articles ($10-$20 per article) sent via traditional interlibrary loan, the costs for document delivery do not seem out of line. Expenditures for commercial document delivery in the ND Libraries has steadily increased over the past several years as the branch libraries rely more and more on commercial suppliers in lieu of traditional interlibrary loan. For the fiscal year 2001-2002, the Libraries spent approximately $16,000 on commercial document delivery. By comparison, during the fiscal year 2003-2004, the Libraries spent nearly $32,000 on commercial document delivery. This figure of $32,000 also includes the costs of purchasing dissertations through ProQuest and ILL books purchased as part of the Books-on-Demand project *, but most of this $32,000 is for articles purchased from commercial suppliers.

* The Books on Demand project is a project implemented last year to test a model of interlibrary loan where certain book requests are filled by purchasing the book, usually via Amazon.com, instead of requesting the book from another library via the traditional interlibrary loan process.

Document Delivery Vendor Selection

After reviewing the literature and examining practices at other libraries, the Document Delivery Task Force has identified the following vendors as potential suppliers for use during a pilot project:

CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information)

CAS Document Detective Service (Chemical Abstracts Services Document Detective Service)

British Library Document Supply Centre

Ingenta Connect (Formerly Uncover)

ISI's Document Solutions (also called Infotrieve)

Linda Hall Library's Document Delivery Service

Sellers and Beam, in their article “Subsidized unmediated document delivery; Current models and a case study” determined that an ideal document delivery service would allow for:  

• User-initiated electronic ordering within a bibliographic database
• Ease of use to minimize the need for assistance
• No use of library staff for processing, i.e. direct delivery to the user
• Linkage to library holdings to enable an automatic block for articles held locally
• Reasonable charges comparable to interlibrary loan
• Automated reports
• A collection of journals satisfying most local needs
• Multiple delivery options [5]

With these features in mind, the task force will consider the following evaluation criteria when making the final decision on which supplier(s) to use for the pilot:  

• Subject coverage
• Types of materials included
• Approximate number of titles included
• Document delivery costs
• Document delivery options and services
• Turnaround time for document requests
• Methods of payment accepted
• Are documents supplied directly or through an intermediary?
• What kinds of management reports/statistics are available?
• Ease of computer interface
• Ability to link to local holdings
• Ability to search at the article level within a database

Examples of pilot projects

Below are examples of types of projects that the task force is considering implementing on a trial basis. These are only examples . The Task Force will bring forth its recommendations regarding the pilot project to Nigel Butterwick in early February, with hopes of starting a pilot project in late February. Once the Task Force has made its recommendations regarding the pilot project, we will prepare a written report, along with a rationale for our decision, including our choice of vendor(s), duration of the pilot, pilot participants, any issues or drawbacks associated with the pilot, etc.

• Scenario 1

Title of Project:  Self-service (unmediated), library- subsidized commercial document delivery at the Notre Dame Libraries using a single commercial provider

Purpose: To test the feasibility and acceptability of using library subsidized, unmediated commercial document delivery to enhance local ownership and provide users with speedy access to journal articles at the time of need. More specifically, we hope to:  

1. Improve service by extending timely journal access outside the present collection.
2. Use the project as a way to measure patron satisfaction with document delivery as an alternate to journal ownership.
3. Study the feasibility and costs of a permanent subsidized, unmediated document delivery service.
4. Evaluate previous cancellation decisions based on data collected from the pilot project.
5. Determine if library-subsidized document delivery benefits some disciplines more than others

Participants: Faculty, post-docs, graduate students, and staff in the chemistry, psychology, anthropology, life sciences, and engineering departments.

Participants will be asked to complete a survey at the end of the pilot. Survey questions might include the following:

1. Would you anticipate using this service in the future if it is continued?
2. Would you be willing to pay a small flat fee for this service in the future?
3. How would you rate the document delivery service overall?
4. How would you rate the delivery time from order to receipt of your article? Did the delivery time meet your expectations?
5. Is this type of document delivery an acceptable alternative to journal ownership?  

• Scenario 2

Run two pilots simultaneously, with selected discipline(s) chosen, i.e. chemistry and biology, to participate in an unmediated document delivery service, and other disciplines, i.e. engineering, anthropology, psychology, chosen to participate in a library mediated service, similar to the program currently being offered in the branches. Survey users at the end of the pilot project to determine their level of satisfaction with the service and make comparisons between the two.  

• Scenario 3

Using open URL linking and SFX, add links to the catalog and to the E-journal locator (and SFX databases) for a predetermined list of journal titles/years that we do not subscribe to, but which are available electronically via a “pay per view” option through Ingenta. These links would be accessible to the entire Notre Dame community via our e-journal locator, SFX databases, and the catalog. The user would click on the link and be taken to the Ingenta gateway to instantaneously “get” the article electronically. This option would require both holdings and user profiles, with attendant cost increases from the Ingenta service.  

To repeat, these are only examples of types of projects that the task force is considering. The task force will be making its final recommendations soon, with hopes of starting a pilot in February. Once we have made our final decision about the pilot project, we will provide Nigel Butterwick, Associate Director of User Services, with a written report with our recommendations. The decision will not be easy, as it involves many complex issues. If there is only one thing the Task Force can agree on, it is that there seems to be no perfect model for meeting our document delivery needs across all disciplines nor is their a perfect vendor of choice. Careful consideration will be given to the many criteria described in this report, while keeping in mind recognized limitations of each of the individual commercial suppliers, such as article and title availability, copyright fees, variable quality of articles received, etc.

The Task Force welcomes your questions and your input.

Prepared by S. Jones

1/05/05

[1] Kleiner, Jane P. and Charles A. Hamaker. “Libraries 2000: Transforming Libraries Using Document Delivery, Needs Assessment, and Networked Resources.” College and Research Libraries 58 (July 1997): 355-372.

[2] Ibid, p. 369.

[3] Michaelyn Haslam and Eva Stowers. “Library-subsidized unmediated document delivery.” LRTS 45 (2): 80-89.

[4] Samson, Sue. “The Coming of Full-Service Access”. The Reference Librarian 63 (1999): 41-53.

[5] Sellers, Minna and Joan Beam. “Subsidized unmediated document delivery, Current models and a case study.”Journal of Academic Librarianship 21: 1995: 459-66.