Papers in PDF format

WEB-EDD: Electronic Document Delivery Via World Wide Web
Ed Dzierzak
Health Science Libraries
Marshall University, USA
dzierzak@muvms6.mu.wvnet.edu
Kent Hayes
Dept. of Finance & Administration
School of Medicine
Marshall University, USA
khayes@musom.marshall.edu
William Lucas
Dept. of Family & Community Health
Marshall University, USA
blucas@musom.marshall.edu
Until recently, document delivery was a rather slow process. In the past requests were sent and received
through the US Postal service. In the medical field, the National Library of Medicine offers an electronic
system for routing Interlibrary loan (ILL) requests - DOCLINE. OCLC is another such service used by public
and academic libraries. Even with these electronic systems for request submission, the actual delivery still
depended on the USPS. With Marshall’s Rural Health Education Partnership program, providing information
to our students and faculty at the rural sites is a major concern.
Fax transmission helped for items needed in a hurry, but quality, until recently, was not all that good. The
Research Libraries Group stepped into the fray with Ariel, a method for transmitting the document images via
the Internet. Finally, it was possible to get good quality documents quickly. This also had the side effect of
making the ILL almost paperless through electronic transmission of the request and electronic transmission
delivery of the document. Unfortunately, Ariel requires special software on the sending and receiving ends for
the document transfer, and has remained largely a library to library transfer medium.
An Ariel file is a “standard multi-page TIFF file compressed to the Group IV fax standard and preceded by a
GEDI (Group on Electronic Document Interchange) header.” Ariel uses and “can import only standard singlepage
or multi-page TIFF files...”. Therefore, to use Ariel files for transmission to the user would require a
special viewer and FTP transfer of the document files. To provide this service to the rural sites requires a
modem - not a particularly fast medium. A 150K file will take about 50 seconds to transfer with a 28,800
modem. The usual journal article requested from the HSL is about 8 pages. A little simple arithmetic shows
that to transfer 8 pages takes about 400 seconds - 3.5 to 4 minutes. While this does not seem to be a lot of time,
when a person is sitting at a computer waiting, it is perceived as something just short of eternity. The goal of
this project is to provide a fast, easy-to-use system for making and receiving document requests.
This prototype, called Web-EDD, uses PC-compatible hardware, and some custom software to scan the desired
document, attach it to the Health Science Libraries’ Web page, provide security for the transmission and
automate the notification of the user. On the user’s end, what is necessary is an Internet connection, PCcompatible
hardware and a freely available viewer. A custom-written viewer is necessary to make the transfer
process as quick and painless as possible.
Web-EDD is an integrated system designed to provide a friendly interface to access printer literature for any
user with Internet access. An interface style similar to browsers currently used on the World Wide Web was
chosen to minimize or eliminate the additional training of both the end users and library staff members. The
process follows the normal method of obtaining a copy of a document. The user using a Web Access Interface
call EDD-View initiates the process. EDD-View is an integrated program which provides users the means to
submit a request for a document, to retrieve the scanned image of the document and to view the facsimile of the