JISC

Docusend will contribute to the development of the JISC Information Environment by creating a one-stop document delivery service for handling journal service requests, which is hospitable to being accessed via other portal and broker services. It will support the JISC’s aim of integrating access to services by linking document delivery to a number of JISC initiatives to provide seamless access to journal resources from resource discovery through to delivery.

Docusend is part of Join-UP, a cluster of four projects (Docusend, zetoc, Xgrain and ZBLSA) which aims to realise the full potential of bibliographic services by informing users about the location of third-party services on the materials referenced therein and the means, where appropriate, to connect automatically to request and delivery mechanisms. Join-UP contributes to the Discover/Locate/Request/Access structure of the Information Environment.

Aims and objectives

The overall aim of the project is to create an accessible, easy to use, one-stop, integrated journal article delivery service. Docusend aims to bring together a wide variety of document delivery and related services in ways that appear transparent and seamless to the user. The objectives are to:

• Provide seamless access to journals from resource discovery through to delivery
• Develop the capability to act as a national gateway for document delivery requests
• Build a consortium of content providers through partnerships and links with a number of suppliers including traditional resource-rich libraries, publishers, the JISC’s data services, learned societies, etc
• Deliver journal articles in electronic format wherever possible (whether born digital or through electronic delivery of print sources)
• Test and, if feasible, implement direct end user requesting and end user delivery

Project design

The focus of the project is on developing a viable and sustainable document delivery service. This will utilise VDX software provided by Fretwell Downing Informatics to handle the complex routing and management transactions involved. Docusend will provide Locate, Request and Deliver functionality which can be accessed individually or as an end-to-end document delivery service. The Locate and Request services will also be built to interface with other Search and Locate services, such as those included within the Join-UP cluster, thereby enabling document delivery requests to be received via broker and other Search and Locate services.

Outcomes

The findings from the Docusend project will help inform developments within Join-UP and will be disseminated more broadly to the JISC community by conventional means (project Web site, publicity flyers, papers, presentations and publications etc) as well as through a series of regional workshops. The project will help illuminate the practical issues involved in developing integrated and interoperable services which include links with a diverse range of partners, including those from the private sector. Ultimately, Docusend will support the FE and HE learning, teaching and research communities by connecting users of the many and varied bibliographic services increasingly coming on stream to services that can deliver the information objects of interest to them. This will be achieved in ways that reduce the need for users to navigate different services and protocols (often requiring different passwords), the need to use different interfaces and the frequent re-keying of search terms.