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Through a partnership with the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah, medical institutions outside the U.S. may now have access to the latest health information. Using the Internet and electronic mail, current literature is delivered to remote sites within 48 hours. The international document delivery service is made possible through PubMed, Loansome Doc and traditional Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine provides Internet access to the 12 million citations in MEDLINE (with links to participating on-line journals) through its PubMed search service. With the advent of PubMed, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/), the National Library of Medicine's free Web access to MEDLINE, PREMEDLINE and molecular biology databases, biomedical literature searching is available to the worldwide Internet community. While only citations and abstracts are available in the MEDLINE database, PubMed includes the Loansome Doc service, which allows users to order complete articles directly from their online search results. To use the Loansome Doc service, the user must establish an account with a participating health sciences library, and requests are automatically routed to that participating library. In order to implement the international document delivery service, a Loansome Doc account is established for the remote medical institution to serve librarians, physicians and/or other health professionals. The account allows online ordering of articles and document delivery through the Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah. Generally, a single contact person is selected at each institution to manage the requests, track usage, and organize delivery of the information on site.
Using this service, the contact person or health professionals at the remote location are able to search the free PubMed service on the Internet and place orders directly from the online literature search results. Physicians and health professionals can also submit their own PubMed searches to the contact person, who places requests for the articles selected. For materials not found in PubMed, requests can be made using the Eccles Library electronic ILLiad System https://utah.hosts.atlas-sys.com/illiad/uue/logon.html on the Library Web site. While it is possible for the individual health professionals to place their orders directly, a centralized ordering procedure is generally established to allow each site to track usage and costs and to ensure accurate accounting and delivery.
Documents are delivered electronically from the Eccles Library to the remote site, via email or via a Web site download. The articles are scanned using the Research Libraries Group's (RLG) Ariel software (http://www.rlg.org/ariel/), a flatbed scanner and networked computer at the Eccles Library. The Ariel software is easily configured to send the scanned material through email. The process is fast and efficient. The articles arrive as email attachments in either graphic 1)TIF or 2)PDF format:
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TIF files (articles) can be opened using the Kodak Imaging for Windows software (http://www.eastmansoftware.com/), a standard accessory with Windows 95, 98 and NT operating systems. Imaging is a multi-page TIF viewer, allowing articles of multiple pages to be displayed as a single document. Multi page TIF viewers are also available for Mac OS.
- PDF files (articles) can be opened using Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't yet have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, get the free Adobe Acrobat Reader from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com.
Ideally, the computer at the remote site is configured to use the Imaging or Reader software as the default program for all files with the TIF or PDF extension, allowing recipients to double click on the attachment link in the email message to open the file. Once displayed, the article is printed on a laser printer and distributed. The contact person at the remote location is responsible for tracking the orders and delivering the articles as they arrive. A per article charge has been established at $5.00 for documents owned by Eccles Library and $11.00 or actual cost for document requests referred to other libraries because the article is not owned by Eccles.
Currently, the Eccles Library serves the following international locations:
| Country | Institution | Location | Start Date of Service |
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| Cyprus | National Hospital Health Sciences Libraries | Nicosia | February 1999 |
| Macedonia | University Sts Cyrill and Methodius Medical Library | Skopje | November 1999 |
| Bulgaria | Pirogov Hospital | Sofia | May 2000 |
| Nepal | Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital | Kathmandu | September 2000 |
| Belarus | Belarus Medical Libraries | Minsk | February 2001 |
| Nepal | Patan Hospital | Kathmandu | March 2001 |
| Nepal | Lalitpur Hospital | Kathmandu | March 2001 |
| Bulgaria | Higher Medical Institute Library | Plovdiv | May 2001 |
| Greece | KAT-Medical Library | Athens | November 2002 |
| Cyprus | Individual Client | Larnaca | May 2003 |
| Venezuela | Centros Médicos Docente Adaptógenos | Caracas | October 2003 |
| Peru | Individual Client | Santa Marina Callao | January 2004 |
| Argentina | Individual Client | Buenos Aires | January 2004 |
| Cyprus | InterCollege | Nicosia | January 2004 |
Contact for more information on these services:
Nancy Lombardo
Systems Librarian
Eccles Health Sciences Library
University of Utah
10 N 1900 E
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-5890
(801) 581-5241
nancyl@lib.med.utah.edu
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