From the library of record to the library as gateway: An analysis of three electronic table-of-contents services

Evaluating Commercial Document Suppliers: Improving Access to Current Journal Literature

“…The criteria used for selecting articles to be ordered from commercial suppliers were as follows: (1) item was not held by UTK libraries; (2) item was not accessible via electronic full-text databases; and (3) item was not available through Docline. The UTK libraries' ILS unit orders all medicine-related titles through Docline.…”

“…The study tested several hypotheses: (1) commercial document suppliers offer quicker turnaround time than the ILS 14-day average; (2) commercial suppliers offer cost-effective service and improved access to titles that some academic libraries cannot afford to purchase or have been forced to cancel; (3) the reproduction quality of commercial documents is acceptable; (4) suppliers would offer easy access and ordering without unnecessary procedures; (5) academic libraries need commercial suppliers' services to supplement ILL document-ordering services; and (6) the ease of use of table-of-contents services, which offer direct-article ordering, provides enhanced access to important titles not held by the library.…”

“…A related problem is figuring out an efficient way to decide which titles will be ordered through which suppliers and which titles will be ordered through interlibrary loan. The two methods available for ILS to verify whether a title is held by a commercial supplier are: (1) searching OCLC (if a supplier lists its holdings), and (2) wading through paper title lists or scanning online lists. One solution to these problems is to create a local database that merges these different types of data.…”

Interlending and document supply: a review of recent literature ‐ XXX

“…In another article[21], three table‐of‐contents services are compared, and the authors say that while ease of use and search software capabilities are important, here the content of the services was the most important consideration. The three services considered were CARL UnCover, FaxonFinder and OCLC Article First, and the article finds that while all three contain very similar journal titles, each provides unique coverage of some titles, which would be useful for specific sections of the library.…”