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The Digital Library
Challenges and solutions for the new millenium
Bologna, June 17-18, 1999

Electronic Document Delivery


Electronic document delivery: new tools and opportunities / Antonio Scolari [*]

Abstract

The increased presence of automated systems, the wider availability of online catalogues, the greater use of networks, the ever more significant presence of digital material, have all contributed to an increase in the number of possilities of access to remote documents and have made the handling of interlibrary loans much simpler and effective.

These new opportunities make it important adhere to a standard that unifies proprietory applications, that range from interlibrary loan modules developed within library systems to the transaction modes used by the most important international document suppliers, such as OCLC in the USA and BLDSC in the UK. Even in the most recent automation programmes, the so called third generation, the ILL mode generally remains in proprietory terms: it can usually process requests according to the proprietors' framework but cannot automatically handle the dialogue between library systems and document suppliers, or between different systems.

The standard can only be ISO 10160 (Interlibrary loan application service definition) and ISO 10161 (Interlibrary loan protocol specification), second edition, published in 1997; the standard aims at providing a control tool of ILL transactions, at making online link among different systems possible, at reducing the costs of ILL transactions at representing current ILL procedures. The standard is rather flexible as it accounts for the three protagonists of interlibrary loan: user, supplier and go-between; it allows a number of interactions that can meet the requirements of single libraries, consortia, union catalogues and even suppliers specialised in document delivery. The standard also caters for the handling of the various procedures of the loan transaction.

The development of functional profiles, the widespread adoption of the standard in Canada, and numerous projects supported by the European Union over the past ten years, have shown the applicability of the standard; a real boost has come from the project "North American Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery" (NAILDD), sponsored by ARL. Both document suppliers and manufacturers of library automation systems have recently multiplied the use of the ISO standard in their trading. Such initiatives let us foresee a quick spread of the standard which is indeed going to be an essential tool for interlibrary lending.



* Antonio Scolari - Università di Genova


N.B. An Italian abstract is also available.

Copyright AIB 1999-05-31, a cura di Serafina Spinelli
URL: https://www.aib.it/aib/commiss/cnur/dlescola.htm

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