Document Delivery in Academic Fee-Based Information Services

Abstract

Summary Academic libraries traditionally provide document delivery services to the campus-based community. Academic fee-based information services accept document requests from corporate, industrial, and professional clients who are willing to pay for a value-added service that includes rush handling, delivery to a third party, or locating an item with a vague citation. The Purdue University Libraries' Technical Information Service (TIS) has grown into a successful venture by developing staff with specialized skills to identify, locate, obtain, and distribute increasingly difficult document orders with short turnaround times. There are advantages to the parent academic library, especially the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) unit, in having a fee-based service to which time-consuming, unusual or expensive requests can be referred. With the potential to increase these advantages comes the need to define clearly the respective roles of these units.