docMD:

Eric H. Schnell (schnell.9@osu.edu)

Associate Professor

Prior Health Sciences Library

The Ohio State University

Bringing Electronic Document Delivery to Small Hospital Libraries

docMD is funded through support by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region.

docMD Goal

“ To establish an electronic document delivery service for hospital libraries that are unable to support such a service themselves due to limited human, financial, or technical resources “

docMD Objectives

Establish a mediated direct-to-customer document delivery service for hospital libraries

Identify the costs involved in providing such a service

Develop a model for use by other resource libraries in other regions of the country

Geography

What is IDD?

Internet Document Delivery

Library to library (Odyssey / Ariel)

Library to library to customer (patron delivery)

Lending library to requesting customer (future)

Why IDD / docMD?

Reduces telecom costs (Landes ’97)

Reduces turnaround time13.76 days (Budd ‘86)

reduced to 2.52 days (Sellen ‘99)

Reduces supply costs(Weible ’02)

Barriers to IDD Implementation

Firewalls (McKnight 2001)

communication ports

network authority

Workflow / staffing (Jackson 1993)

Access to technical staff

Fiscal resources

How docMD Jumps these Barriers

Firewalls a common communication port is used (80)

Workflow / staffing ILL processing remains the same Less physical processing of documents

Access to technical staff Technical staff at mediation center Little site support needed

Fiscal resources NLM / GMR supported

Traditional ILL/IDD Customer

Processing Model

Local Library

Customer

OCLC / DOCLINE

Lending “A” Lending “B”

Scans/Sends though IDD Scans/Sends though IDD

IDD

Web Server

docMD Delivery Model

Scans/Sends though IDD Scans/Sends though IDD

Local Library

Customer

OCLC /DOCLINE

Lending “A” Lending “B”

docMD

Web Server

Email with docID#

Email Alert

docMD Statistics (as of Aug 5, ‘05)

490 registered customers

4750 documents processed

<1% required reposting

<1% alternative distribution

<1% posting failures

~15% have gone unviewed

>40% sent to the librarian

docMD Statistics

Average document processing time: 1 minute

Average number of documents requiring follow up: 1 per week

Number of customers contacting docMD central regarding difficulty in

downloading: 4

Turnaround Time

Pre – docMD: 6.53 days (max 19 days)

Post – docMD: 3.52 days (max 11)

46% reduction

Feedback

“Our docs are always so delighted when personalized mail arrives for them.” one has a “raft of administrators tooling past his office wanting to know how his articles were retrieved electronically. They believe that he magically pulled them up all by himself. “

Issues:

Geography: Project leaders / librarian face-to-face contact difficult

Geography II: Difficult if not impossible to organize group training

Geography III: Email helps. Phone is more effective but more time consuming

Issues:

How docMD is implemented at a site is dependent on the hospital librarian

Level of participation is dependent on the marketing performed by the hospital librarians

Too much hand-holding or separation anxiety?

Issues: Funding

Pay-to-Play Hospitals pays a fee based on the number of

documents or per document fee schedule.

Subsidized Each NNLM region establishes funding

opportunities for resource libraries to support a docMD service for their resource area.

Benevolent Any library can provide the service but

supports it using their individual operating funds and can pursue reimbursement from the participants.

Obrigado!

E-mail: schnell.9@osu.edu

Project: docmd.med.ohio-state.edu