Electronic Document Delivery – Towards the Virtual Library

Abstract

Reduced funding, global competition and technological change are forcing libraries and information centres to turn to new methods of providing services. Publishers of scientific and technical information expect printed journals to remain their primary product for several more years, despite the advent of electronic journals. Library collections will continue to be largely paper‐based, but clients will demand much faster document delivery services from them. Many libraries must also maximize the investment in their collections by expanding their clientele. Electronic scanning of documents coupled with transmission over high‐speed, high‐capacity networks offers a potential solution to these problems. For more than a year, CISTI has been using proprietary imaging workstations to supply documents to one of its branches. Much more flexibility is needed to reach the disparate receiving equipment used by a varied Canadian and international clientele. Describes experience with the Ariel Workstation, developed by the Research Libraries Group, and CISTI′s own work towards a generic imaging workstation, able to transmit to a variety of receivers including identical scanning workstations, other workstations, facsimile machines and microcomputers with facsimile boards. Ability to rationalize library collections is seen as an important consequence.