Document Delivery Services : Contrasting Views

Design and maintain document delivery services that are ideal for academic patrons!

In Document Delivery Services: Contrasting Views, you’ll visit four university library systems to discover the considerations and challenges each library faced in bringing document delivery to its clientele. This book examines the questions about document delivery that are most pressing in the profession of library science. Despite their own unique experiences, you’ll find common practices among all four—including planning, implementation of service, and evaluation of either user satisfaction and/or vendor performance.

This book reviews the planning and process of implementing document delivery in:

• Miami University
• University of Colorado at Denver
• University of Montana at Missoula
• Purdue University Libraries

Document Delivery Services: Contrasting Views addresses the paradigm of access versus acquisition and shows you how document delivery can be more integral in the library right alongside full-text databases, Internet access, and reference services. This book focuses on the issues that develop specifically in academic libraries, such as the “invisible” user majority of undergraduate students when considering budget issues and collection development. This book also explores the dynamic relationship between faculty and library administration that can impact events such as serials cancellations, alternative access to materials, and the reorganization of libraries to incorporate enhanced services to users.

You’ll find useful information and proven methods concerning these topics:

• re-engineering library services
• restructuring a traditional Interlibrary Loan Department into an Information Delivery/Interlibrary Loan Department (ID/ILL)
• criteria for document delivery vendor selection
• delivering electronic tables of contents and search strategy outputs to faculty desktops
• document delivery in academic fee-based information services

With Document Delivery Services: Contrasting Views, document delivery becomes more than a simple acquisitions tool or a necessary service; instead it is an enhanced access service that lends greater perspective to library staff and users alike. This handy volume will help expand the role of document delivery services in your own library setting.