News
| Date | 01 April 1988 |
| Published date | 01 April 1988 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb044812 |
| Pages | 236-240 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
news
GENERAL
Test evaluates feasibility of CD-ROM
as document supply medium
The hypothesis goes like this. If document supply
centres could cut the cost of filling requests for
journal articles, and continue to charge the same
price for their service, publishers of the journals
could share in the resultant increase in profits. One
way to cut costs, the hypothesis continues, may be
to replace the labour-intensive photocopying pro-
cedures currently practised at the supply centres
with document delivery on CD-ROM. The new
technology could also enhance publisher/library
relationships by improving the scope of service to
library users.
It's an interesting concept, but will it work?
Adonis, a project sponsored by ten international
publishers, fifteen document supply centres and
the European Communities, is finding out.
Adonis is a trial document delivery service that
supplies 219 biomedical journals published in
1987 and 1988 on CD-ROM. The discs, which
appear approximately every week, are delivered to
major document supply centres in Europe, the
USA, Mexico, Australia and Japan and are used to
fulfill requests for individual articles received by
the centres in the course of their normal activities.
Biomedicine was chosen as the subject area for the
project based on the findings of three major docu-
ment delivery surveys. The surveys showed that
demand for biomedical articles is greater than that
for other subjects, that most of the articles are less
than three years old and that they are relatively
high in halftone content.
Each week articles, letters, abstracts and other
editorial material in the 219 journals are indexed
according to bibliographic details, then identified
by a unique Adonis article number. The index in-
formation is sent in machine-readable form
(ASCII) to the Scanmedia Ltd bureau in England
where the content of the articles is scanned. The
scanning resolution used is 300 x
300 pel
(about 12
lines/mm) for pages with half-tones and 300 x 150
(8 lines/mm) for text-only pages.
The scanned contents, together with the ASCII
index information are then preformatted and a
weekly master
disc
is produced by Philips and Du-
Pont Optical Company (PDO) in Hannover. From
this disc copies are prepared and dispatched to the
participating document supply centres.
Each disc will carry the index information as
well as the digital representation of the
articles.
On
receiving the discs the supply centre can read the
index information and store it in a cumulative cur-
rent awareness index to match incoming document
requests. Discs should be available within about
four weeks of receipt of the published journal in
Amsterdam, about the time expected before the
journal begins to generate requests.
Every three months the collected statistics
showing which items have been printed will be
sent to the British Library along with a consoli-
dated report showing what was copied, when, the
age of the article, the type of requester (academic,
governmental, industrial) and the country where
the request originated. An indication of operating
costs will be given to permit comparison with the
conventional service. The trial will last until June
1989 and these statistics will be the basis of the
most comprehensive document delivery survey
ever undertaken. It is expected that this survey will
provide both librarians and publishers with a clear
insight into what material is being used.
Requirements of the Adonis workstation were
specified by the British Library. MC2 of Meylan in
France was awarded the contract to supply the
workstation. The design is basically that of the
Laser Datasystem using an IBM PC or compatible
computer, an optional high resolution monitor
cap-
able of displaying a full journal page, proprietary
cards,
a Hitachi CD-ROM drive and a Ricoh laser
printer.
Retrieval can
be by
author, title and
so
on, or via
the Adonis article number. In addition to the re-
trieval software, the system includes British Li-
brary software to keep a log of items printed.
Retrieval takes an average of eight seconds, ac-
cording to the Adonis Project, and
the
printer speed
is about eight pages per minute.
236
The
Electronic
Library,
August
1988.
Vol.6,
No.4
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