Automation of ILL and EDD services at the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

The Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences possesses unique collections of the national and foreign science literature. It acts as a federal STI authority in the natural and engineering sciences. Therefore, one of the Library’s key functions is delivering materials (originals and fragment copies) from its collection to other libraries within the ILL system. The RAS Library for Natural Sciences heads the country’s largest centralized library system (CLS) embracing 49 affiliates of research organizations in Moscow region. The CLS collections, including those of the Central Library, make the single distributed collection to provide services to ILL subscribers. The peculiar feature of the Library’s ILL services is that it delivers materials to its subscribers (the CLS libraries) not only from the CLS collections alone but also from other Moscow and Russian major library collections. The authors describe the computerized system designed at the Russian Academy of Sciences Library for Natural Sciences and characterize the used ILL technology. The structure of the information base comprises ‘Clients’ and ‘Orders’ units. Order dispatching and cash settlements with subscribers are provided by the system’s management unit; the retrieval and statistical tasks are also accomplished. The user unit supports order generation based on union e-catalogs. Specific features of order generation based on various Internet-catalogs, i. e. journals, books and periodicals, image catalogs of national and foreign books, are examined.