Document delivery services in an electronic world

The growth in electronic information such as internet sites, electronic journals, full text documents has in many cases led to speedier and cheaper delivery of documents to clients. In addition, it allows clients to store information more efficiently. This development should ultimately markedly reduce the amount of resources allocated to document delivery by information centres/libraries.

This paper will summarise developments that are leading to more efficient and effective document delivery services but also highlight new barriers that have arisen.

• Issues

• Inconsistent Access – IP – issue for external clients, Password
• Archiving electronic only issues to ensure access
• Each journal has different contract specifications regarding use
• Pay for view access available ie Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise but expensive
• Higher cost for some subscriptions

• Sources

• Free Medical List - http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/htm/
• Australian Journals Online - http://www.nla.gov.au/ajol/ - limited sport
• NSIC Journals List - http://www.ausport.gov.au/nsic/serials/ - some titles – free of charge – Technique, Physician and Sportsmedicine

• Issues

• Variable full text access – not all articles covered in an issue, limited periods ie only after 1^st year
• Copyright prevents emailing the whole article

• Major databases such as Sport Discus and Medline provide direct access from records to full text articles or other material.

• Specialist databases such as the German Sponet database provide access to free internet resources only.

• Issues

• broken links
• cost of articles
• inconsistent coverage

• Knowledge Finder – http://www.kfinder.com and Ingenta - http://www.ingenta.com offer pay for view access but expensive @ $20-30 US per article

Many sports organisations are making a commitment to ensuring that their core documents ie reports, journals, policies are published on their website. However what happens when a document is updated or revised - it is important that websites provide archive access to superseded documents as there may be the need to be future access to these documents.

The NSIC in a small way is attempting to permanently save many core Australian sport web documents in its Full Text Archive - http://www.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/ .

The Full Text Archive address is the only address used in indexing these documents for Sport Discus and Ausport Databases – the problem of broken links should not arise with these documents

• Issues

• Copyright Notices – within the Library and to External Clients – notices available at ALIA website - http://www.alia.org.au/copyright/notices.html
• Destroying Sent Electronic Requests
• Cannot provide electronic articles where ‘commercially available" - what implications does this have for AUSPIN members
• Libraries forwarding electronic articles to clients
• Access issues for internet articles
• CAL Agreements

• Direct client access to information
• Clients can store information electronically - CD's or PC's
• Speedier and cheaper delivery of information
• Better quality of documents delivered

• Clients information technology access
• Publisher constraints
• Digital copyright regulations

This is an archive copy of a paper presented at 'Sharing information and building relationships - the Sport Information Workshop, 13–15 November, 2002, Perth WA' all copyright remains with the author.

The National Sport Information Centre Web Archive provides access to archive copies of materials in electronic forms. There is no inference that these materials necessarily reflect the current policy of any of the institutions or agencies that created them.