Document delivery services (DDS) are essential to meet the information needs of library users by providing access to original or copied documents on demand. The growth of DDS has been driven by factors such as increased research activity, the rise of electronic technologies, and the emergence of e-journal consortia, which have streamlined access to documents. The efficiency of DDS hinges on its speed, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to satisfy user requests rapidly and accurately.

1. DOCUMENT
DELIVERY
SERVICE
Dr.P.PADMA
Assistant Professor
DOLIS

2. INTRODUCTION
• The prime objective of any library is to meet the information requirements of
its clients most effectively. To meet this objective, the library builds the
collection in a planned manner and offers a variety of information services to
inform the users what is available and whatever latest has been published in
their areas of interest. All these services generate requests from the users for
the original documents. The service that supplies the required document to
the user on demand is known as Document Delivery Service.

3. WHAT IS
DOCUMENT
DELIVERY
SERVICE(DDS)?O
R DOCUMENT
SUPPLY SERVICE
• Delivery Service (DDS) is actually
concerned with the supply of
documents to the users on demand,
either in original or its copy in
print or non-print form,
irrespective of the location and
form of the original. DDS is a very
important service, since the value
and importance of other access
services are directly dependent on
the efficiency of this service.

4. CONTD..
• Online Dictionary of Library
and Information Science
defines DDS as “Provision of
published or unpublished
documents in hardcopy,
microform, or digital format,
usually, for a fixed fee upon
request.”

5. GROWTH AND
DEVELOPMEN
T
• Earlier, the DDS was limited to the lending of
required documents to the user for a specified
period of time by the library from its own
collection and if not available within the
library, then borrowing it from other libraries
on interlibrary loan and lending it to the user.
With the introduction of xerography in mid
1950s and large scale use of photocopiers in
libraries by 1970s, the DDS was not just
confined to the lending of documents, but
documents could be duplicated and
permanently given to the users. The libraries
started using photocopiers to supply copies of
the required documents, such as journal article
or a few pages of books for DDS purposes

6. NEED OF
DOCUMENT
DELIVERY
SERVICES
The demand for DDS kept on increasing
with increase in number of researchers
primarily in the areas of science and
technology. This was followed by other
disciplines. There were many other
factors which resulted in increase in
demand for DDS from 1960s onwards.
For example, exponential growth of
published literature, increase in number of
users and availability of online and CD-
ROM bibliographic databases providing
easy and timely access to published
information, resulted in great demand for
the original documents.
On the other hand, the declining library
budgets, increasing costs of the
publications, made it difficult for the
libraries to fulfil the growing demands of
their users. Many libraries started relying
on other libraries to meet increased
information needs of their users.

7. CONTD..
Over the years, what was earlier known as interlibrary
loan grew into a planned system of library cooperation.
To facilitate such cooperation, a unified list of Union
Catalogues was compiled. At the same time, producers of
bibliographic databases started offering DDS for the
bibliographical references listed in their databases.
However, library cooperation systems had their own
limitations, such as problems of updating the union
catalogue, extra inter-lending burden on large
libraries and withdrawal of some participating
libraries.
To overcome these problems, need for specialized
document supply centres, exclusively devoted to the
document delivery service was felt.

8. EFFICIENCY
OF
DOCUMENT
DELIVERY
SERVICE
DDS should be cost-effective, speedily
delivered and satisfying all the requests it
receives.
Satisfaction level.
Cost and
Speed,
The efficiency of DDS is determined by
three factors, namely,

9. SPEED
• The methods, of receiving requests, processing the requests and
mode of delivery of fax, electronic-mail or online systems.
• Online request and delivery of the document is the fastest, though
delivery of documents in this mode is expensive.
• However, the speed of supply of documents depends on many other
factors such, as time taken to locate the document from within the
institution and if not available, then, time taken to find its location,
transmitting the request, processing of the request by the library
supplying the document, receipt of the document by the requesting
library and finally delivering the document to the user.
• All these factors affect the speed of supply.
• With the availability of online databases, online public access
catalogues, etc., it is possible to search for information from remote
locations on the networks, request the selected document and receive
the required document electronically almost instantly.
• Electronic document delivery systems offer a great promise. Here,
speed is the major attraction. However, copyright issues and high
cost are some of the constraints which are attracting the worldwide
attention

10. COST
DDS should be cost-effective .
There are two types of cost, direct
and indirect cost.
Direct cost is the cost of operating the service i.e., cost Of
processing of requests, copying the document, postage,
etc.,
Indirect cost includes the cost of
building collection, salaries of the
staff, cost of equipment, etc.
It is increasingly realised that the service
can be more cost-effective if it is operated
by building a core collection to meet
primary needs of the users and for residual
requests, accessing speedily the material
from external sources.

11. SATISFACTION LEVEL
DDS should target at satisfying all the requests it
receives for the supply of the documents. A high
satisfaction level depends not only on the
availability of the required document in the centre
that offers the service but also on the ability of the
centre to locate and supply it from elsewhere in
the world as quickly as possible.

12. M O D E O F D O C U M E N T D E L I V E RY
S E RV I C E
• Document Delivery means supplying documents
( Copies in print or digital format) are delivered
through mail/ courier or other way. Document
delivery to end users implies three types of
operations
• Document identification
• Document location
• Document procurement

13. DOCUMENT IDENTIFICATION
• It requires the bibliographical details of
the documents such as author, article
title, source, volume, and pages
correctly in a given format. User can
verify such details by searching the web
or the relevant databases.

14. DOCUMENT LOCATION
• It identifying the library holdings
the documents under reference.
User may search using union
catalogues available form library
networks

15. DOCUMENT PROCUREMENT
• It implies writing to the relevant libraries service
providers for delivery documents. There are
several modes of documents procurement
• Requesting documents from the holding
library/library networks
• Requesting documents from document delivery
service providers
• Searching the web for digital copies of the
documents for free access

16. DOCUMENT
SUPPLY
CENTRES
• In response to the need for specialized
document supply centres, many nationalized
centres came up in the world offering DDS
service in planned manner.
• Some of the document supply centres
operating in the world are British Library
Document Supply Service (BLDSS) U.K.;
National Library of Medicine, USA;
National Institute of Science
Communication and Information Resources
(NISCAIR), New Delhi, India; Document
Delivery Service of National Library of
Australia; and Document Delivery Service
of INFLIBNET, Ahmadabad, India.
• These centres offer DDS drawing upon the
resources ranging from comprehensive
centralized collection to decentralized
collection.

17. IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY
• The advent of computers, scanners and
telecommunication technologies in 1980s made it
possible to store the documents in electronic form
and transfer the same electronically anywhere via
telecommunication networks almost instantly.
• Many libraries and information centres started using
this technology to deliver the documents. This
greatly increased the speed of the service.
• The availability of full-text e-journals and e-books
on the Internet and emergence of World Wide Web
in 1990s had most significant impact on the DDS.
• The scope of DDS expanded beyond the traditional
libraries and document delivery centres. The
database producers, e-journal publishers,
commercial online vendors, commercial e-journal
service providers and aggregators also started
delivering documents electronically.

18. E L E C T R O N I C D O C U M E N T D E L I V E RY
S Y S T E M S
• The systems employing electronic technology for receipt of requests and
supply of documents electronically over telecommunication networks are
called Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS).
• This technology uses series of devices that scan paper copy of the
document, capture the document image and store it in digital format.
• The digital copy of the document is sent electronically via e-mail, fax or
other document delivery software like “Ariel” to the requester.
• Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines Electronic
Document Delivery as “The transfer of information traditionally recorded
in physical medium (print, videotape, sound recording, etc.) to the user
electronically via e-mail or World Wide Web.
• The libraries employ digital technology to deliver the information
contained in the documents and files placed on reserve and requested via
inter library loan.”

19. E M E R G E N C E O F E - J O U R N AL C O N S O R T I A
• At present most of the scholarly peer reviewed
journal are available in print as well in electronic
form. E-journals, with built in search facilities,
multimedia capability and remote access, are in
great demand by the library users.
• But ever shrinking budget of the libraries and
exponential growth of e-publications and their
escalating cost are making it difficult for individual
library to meet this demand. So, many libraries are
joining to form a consortium for subscription to
ejournals. With Internet access to e-journal, a user
can search and browse table of content of a journal,
view abstract of the selected article and if desired
can browse and download the full-text article
instantaneously on his/her computer.

20. CONTD…
• Consortium based subscription to e-
journals and electronic full text databases
are picking up by libraries in India.
• At present over 10 national level consortia
are operating in the country.
• Some of them are INDEST-AICTE
Consortium, UGC-INFONET Digital
Library Consortium, and National
Knowledge Resource Consortium of e-
resources of CSIR and DST.
This has resulted in lesser demand for
printed journal articles. Because of e-Journal
consortia, most of the document supply
centres are witnessing decrease in demand
for delivery of documents, particularly of
journal articles

21. ELECTRONIC
DOCUMENT
DELIVERY
SYSTEMS
(EDDS) –
EXAMPLES
EDDS systems provide
immediate access to the
needed information.
In such systems, the
request may be received
by telephone, e-mail,
Fax or online.
The document is sent
electronically via email,
or other document
delivery software like
Ariel. EDDS can provide
immediate access to the
material.
Apart from speed, it is
convenient to access the
information for which
EDDS are preferred over
traditional document
delivery methods.
Ariel Interlibrary Loan
Software is an Internet
document transmission
system owned and
supported by Infotrieve
Inc.
It is used by a large
number of libraries around
the world for electronic
document delivery
purposes. Ariel software
permits user to scan, store,
transmit, and print
material.
With Ariel software, an
article in a print journal
can be scanned into PC
and image transmitted over
the Internet to other Ariel
workstations anywhere in
the world.

22. CONCLUSION
• Document Delivery Services provides the pinpointed, proper and very quick
service to the user. Document delivery service is dm culminating point of all
the access services and plays a vital role in information access and
dissemination. While other library services help the user to identify the
document he needs, this service actually locates the document and delivers it
to the user. Modem computers and telecommunication technologies are
exerting great impact on document delivery systems. Emergence of CD-
ROM as the cheapest storage medium for large Volume storage, has resulted
in the production of a large number of full-text databases on CD-ROM which
are increasingly being used for document delivery purposes. The integration
of online, CD-ROM and fax technologies have set new high-tech trends in
document delivery. Electronic' Document Delivery Systems are emerging
which facilitate online searching, online ordering and online delivery of
document.