SAIL - AUTOMATING INTERLIBRARY LOAN

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) initiated the System for Automa ted Interlibrary Loan (SAIL) pilot project to study the feasibility of using imaging technology linked to the DOCLINE(R) system to deliver c opies of journal articles. During the project, NLM converted a small n umber of print journal issues to electronic form, linking the captured articles to the MEDLINE citation unique identifier. DOCLINE requests for these journals that could not be filled by network libraries were routed to SAIL. Nearly 23,000 articles from sixty-four journals recent ly selected for indexing in Index Medicus were scanned to convert them to electronic images. During fiscal year 1992, 4,586 scanned articles were used to fill 10,444 interlibrary loan (ILL) requests, and more t han half of these were used only once. Eighty percent of all the artic les were not requested at all. The total cost per article delivered wa s $10.76, substantially more than it costs to process a photocopy requ est, Because conversion costs were the major component of the total SA IL cost, and most of the articles captured for the project were not re quested, this model was not cost-effective. Data on SAIL journal artic le use was compared with all ILL requests filled by NLM for the same p eriod. Eighty-eight percent of all articles requested from NLM were re quested only once. The results of the SAIL project demonstrated that c onverting journal articles to electronic images and storing them in an ticipation of repeated requests would not meet NLM's objective to impr ove interlibrary loan.