SEEKING THE 99-PERCENT CHEMISTRY LIBRARY - EXTENDING THE SERIAL COLLECTION THROUGH THE USE OF DECENTRALIZED DOCUMENT DELIVERY

Libraries are successfully seeking, developing, and testing new ways t o broaden their collections with materials that are neither cataloged nor stored for anticipated need. Instead, these acquisitions are purch ased on demand, ordered and received online, by fan or overnight mail, and delivered to the requester. At the University of Illinois at Urba na-Champaign (UIUC) Chemistry Library, a document delivery project was established to study how this type of acquisition could be mainstream ed into everyday collection development as a traditional user service. A 6 1/2-month pilot project was conducted that provided free document delivery for articles, patents, and conference proceedings, which wer e available through the Chemical Abstracts Document Delivery Service, a commercial vendor. This pilot study tested the feasibility of decent ralized document delivery in a branch library; a follow-up questionnai re was used to gauge user response to the service. Data from the study were also used to evaluate the serials collection and previous serial cancellation decisions. Results showed the decentralized document del ivery service (DDS) was a cost-effective way to extend the serials col lection; the user survey results showed a high level of user satisfact ion associated with the service.