Electronic Document Delivery System Program

The approach in this automated document delivery system is motivated by the hypothesis that there exists a class of users who need direct access to an electronic archive of document images rather than the indirect route taken by SAIL involving a nationwide community of medical libraries cooperating in an interlibrary loan arrangement. Three generations of a prototype system were built and tested, each succeeding generation possessing greater functionality than the previous one.

The final version of the prototype system, reported in the literature in FY 1993, allows a remote user equipped with a Document Request Workstation (DRW) to perform a search of MEDLINE via GRATEFUL MED, and then directly access an electronic store of document images, and receive the document images through fax, mail or local pickup. The remote user's DRW consists of affordable, off-the-shelf components such as an IBM-compatible PC clone and a standard fax machine. It also requires special inhouse-developed software. After demonstrating the third-generation EDDS system, in FY 1993 its functions were described in a publication: Thoma GR, Walker FL: Essential Functions in an Electronic Document Delivery System. Chapter: High-Performance Medical Libraries, Advances in Information Management for the Virtual Era (N. Broering, ed.), Meckler Publishing, Westport CT, 1993, pp. 77-88.

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URL: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/edds.php
Last updated August 21, 2001

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