ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 658 / C&RL News reported lost. At some time later, when it was found by a graduate student, it was not returned to the library. Rather, because it was so accurately tabulated, it became a Sibelius handbook passed around quietly to whomever needed it most. This process continued from February 1937 to June 1940 when I was asked by a departing student to return ‘a book’ to the library which was then closed. Since I was not leaving until mid-morning on the following day, I promised to return the book. It so happened, however, that my folks came to pick me up on that same evening—twelve hours ahead of schedule. With five years worth of souve­ nirs to stow in the car, I stuffed extra goodies— including ‘the book’—into my trunk to be shipped. “By strange chance the trunk was lost in transit and finally delivered in late August 1940. “At that time, my brother, a student at [a univer­ sity in Canada], needed an extra trunk. When I fin­ ished unpacking mine for him to use, I looked in­ side the Sibelius for the first time and discovered that it was 3.5 years overdue! What a surprise! So—in exchange for the use of the trunk, I asked a serious favor of my brother: to mail the book back to Rochester pronto, from Canada, as anony­ mously as possible. “Several years later, after finishing medical school in [an American city], my brother returned the trunk—empty except for the Sibelius. “Since that long-ago time, at yearly inventory I have greeted this thesis with chicken-hearted re­ gret; and, although I have become particularly en­ lightened in the field it treats, the pressure of un­ pardonable procrastination is reaching quasi-psychotic proportions. “Please accept this belated offering with as cheerful grace as possible. Thanks a million, close to a thousand dollars of which would cover the overdue fine. Keep the change for good luck!” The letter was signed by a 1939 graduate of the Eastman School of Music, who had also enclosed a million-dollar “Special Issue Note” in play money to amuse the library staff.—R eprinted, w ith the a u th o r’s perm ission, fr o m The Sibley Muse 11, n o.3/4 (S eptem ber/N ovem ber 1988). All references to particular persons have been rem oved. Books and bytes By S a ra E ich h orn Acting H ead o f Circulation University o f California, Irvine A successful electronic document delivery service fo r books and journal articles. At first glance, books and bytes seem to share no common ground. One is print and hard-copy, the other electronic. One is associated with Guten­ berg, scribes, and the Bible, the other with MTV, Big Brother and thermonuclear global war. But in today’s libraries, books and bytes are be­ ginning to intertwine. New electronic media are taking over the old manual methods of libraries and, as with everything else in our society, revolu­ tionizing them. Today’s libraries use computers to check out books, issue fines and even deliver books. In com­ puterese, this process is known as document deliv­ ery but it has its roots in plain old recordkeeping and the rural tradition of checking out books through the postal mail service. As with manual November 1988 / 659 records, electronic records are used to analyze the activity that has taken place and to help plan for the future. And now, electronic mail and electric campus carts substitute for the U.S. Postal Service to provide document delivery service. UCI is a 16,000-student campus near the Pacific Ocean, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego. It has some 900 faculty members on cam­ pus. The UCI Main Library Circulation Depart­ ment began document delivery service on January 6, 1986. Its purpose was to enhance the research of faculty members by placing books in their hands without requiring them or their staff to physically visit the Library. The long-term goal was to, in ef­ fect, deliver the books by computer. But the service was initially established in the time-honored man­ ual fashion, with penciled notes on slips of paper. This pilot manual delivery service was available Mondays through Fridays to and from the Main L i­ brary to the faculty’s on-campus offices, either di­ rectly to the faculty member or a designated assis­ ta n t or secretary. M aterials to be delivered included all books ordered or recalled by the fac­ ulty member, Interlibrary Loan items, special pur­ chases from the Acquisitions Department, and films from the Library Media Center. Material also could be returned by the same service. A Circulation Department clerk worked two to three hours a day processing the delivery service. Duties included sorting materials for delivery by building and department, preparing routing slips, checking for retrieval reservations, charging out materials for faculty, keeping statistics, delivering the materials by an electric cart and returning oth­ ers to the Main Library. This service actually in­ cluded retrieving materials from the L ibrary’s stacks, Government Publications Department, In­ terlibrary Loan, and the Media Center. In addi­ tion, the Library’s Copy Service was given the op­ portunity to use the Circulation D epartm ent’s service to deliver photocopies of materials pre­ pared on a charge-to-department basis and re­ quested for delivery. Daily statistics kept from the onset of the pro­ gram included: dates of delivery, initials of the de­ livery person, names of the faculty requesting de­ livery, titles and call numbers of the requested books, and names of the faculty members or secre­ taries receiving the material. Additional statistics were kept to indicate where the delivered books came from and the number of returns. One of my goals, upon becoming acting head of the Circulation Department some months after this service began, was to expand and improve the document delivery service. It soon became clear that a dramatic and exciting way of accomplishing this goal would be to computerize the document delivery service— in effect, to deliver books by computer. The UCI campus was already swept up in the electronic revolution. Administrators had stand­ ardized the use of personal computers and autho­ rized their purchase for faculty members through­ out much of the campus. The University Administration encouraged the use of electronic mail and provided the equipment and facilities for doing so. Computerizing the document delivery service would be mutually advantageous for both the fac­ ulty and the Circulation Department. Faculty members could request books or other materials from the Library without leaving their desks. The Circulation Department, meanwhile, would have its records stored on computer. Until time permit­ ted, internal record-keeping documents were kept in the time-honored manual fashion, with pen­ cilled notes on slips of paper. The Circulation Department immediately be­ gan working with the UCI Computing Facility on campus to develop this electronic service initially through the Main Library. As envisioned, books re­ quested electronically would be provided on same- day or next-day delivery. If the material was un­ available, the faculty member would receive a report by electronic mail on the status of the re­ quest. These requests required the following infor­ mation: library card number; campus delivery ad­ dress; book call number and brief title; if the book was not available, should it be recalled; and any additional comments. In January 1987 the new electronic document delivery service began inauspiciously for the Social Science and Social Ecology faculty. It was immedi­ ately enhanced to include delivery of books that were requested by faculty for purchase. In other words, if a faculty member requested a book that was already in the collection, a staff person from the Circulation Department would retrieve the book from the stacks and it would be delivered. Starting March 1, the document delivery service also expanded to include University Administra­ tion, the Engineering Department, and the Infor­ mation and Computer Science Department. A mailing distribution list for these departments was obtained and personal letters announcing the new service were sent to all faculty from University Ad­ ministration, the Engineering Department, and the Information and Computer Science Depart­ ment along with instructions on how to make use of it. In April 1987 the Biomedical Library and the Physical Sciences Library joined the Main Library in providing document delivery service via the on­ line DDS program. At the same time, the service was further expanded to provide to faculty in Bio­ logical Sciences, Fine Arts, Humanities, and the College of Medicine. The following September, DDS was expanded to include faculty in the Grad­ uate School of Management, Physical Education, Teacher Education, and Physical Sciences. In Oc­ tober, DDS reached its complete audience with ex­ pansion to 116 additional persons in the University Administration. These included non-faculty per­ sons who headed departments. 660 / C&RL News To complicate matters, it was decided that at the end of 1987 the UCI Computing Facility would discontinue the use of the CP6 system that operated on a Honeywell DPS 8/49 computer. This would be replaced by the VMS and ORION systems. ORION is the nickname that the UCI Computing Facility has given to the UNIX service that uses a Balance 21K computer manufactured by Sequent Com- The campus was already swept up in the electronic revolution. puter Systems. The VAX/VMS system runs on Dig­ ital Equipment Corporation’s equipment and pro­ vides connection to the UCInet campus backbone Ethernet and electronic mail network. Also pro­ vided is connection to BITN ET, a network linking over 2,000 computing systems worldwide for elec­ tronic mail and file exchange. Therefore, our docu­ ment delivery programs had to be rewritten for ORION and VMS. Although it took about six weeks for the programs to be rewritten, there were no complications and there was no real interrup­ tion in service. By the end of 1987, books were being delivered to the entire campus. Professors and others would order their requests, the books were being paged by members of the Libraries’ stack crews, and the DDS courier worked two to three hours a day mak­ ing deliveries. Faculty next began to ask that the service be ex­ panded to include the delivery of journal articles. This meant that additional personnel would be needed. The DDS program would have to be fur­ ther expanded, and a decision would have to be made about whether the faculty would be charged for this service. A document delivery and replacement assistant position was recruited and filled. Half of this per- son’s time is devoted to expediting faculty requests for document delivery. The rest is spent replacing lost items. The document delivery library assistant is responsible for building a delivery collection daily. Electronic mail is checked twice a day for re­ quests and response is also made to patrons imme­ diately when appropriate. Books are paged from the stacks and recalls and holds placed on titles in circulation. Books and journals are photocopied by the DDS library assistant for recharging to faculty and ultimate delivery. Daily delivery and retrieval includes preparing a daily delivery roster, checking out items in CLSI to requesting faculty, and inte­ grating into the delivery route the delivery of mate­ rials for the branch libraries and the pickup of ma­ terials from faculty offices. All returned materials are checked in and branch materials placed in the campus mail for the next day return. Statistics are kept daily for the monthly report. The DDS program has been enhanced so that faculty can now request both books and journal ar­ ticles. The final format of this request form asks the following questions: Document delivery service request Select holding library: l . Main 2. Biomedical 3. Physical Sciences Enter choice: 1. Library card no.(Patron Zebra): 2-1970- 2. Campus Delivery Address: Room No./Bldg. 3. Department 4. Is this request for a Pickup only? (Y/N) 5. Is this a request for a book or an article? (1 = Book, 2 = Article) Please enter exact information for your request to be processed: 6. Book Call No. 7. Brief Title 8. If the book is not available then recall/hold? (Y/N) 9. If the book is unavailable for recall do you want to be notified? (Y/N) 10. Journal or microform call no. 11. Journal title 12. Volume, issue, date & pages 13. Article title 14. Departmental recharge account ($.20 per ex­ posure) no. 15. If the Journal is unavailable, do you want to be notified? (Y/N): 16. Comments: Do you wish to make any changes? (Y/N) Do you wish to request another document from the same library? (Y/N) Do you wish to request another document from a different library? (Y/N) The fin al and most d ifficu lt decision was whether faculty would be charged for the copying of journal articles. It was finally determined to es­ tablish a $.20 per exposure charge for photocopies made from unbound or bound journals and books. It was decided that there would be no additional service charge for each request. The future Now that the requesting of books and articles is done by electronic mail, the University of Califor­ nia, Irvine, Libraries are making plans to accept Interlibrary Loan requests and course listings for Reserve Services by electronic mail. It can be antic­ November 1988 / 661 ipated that developments based on the electronic revolution will continue to accelerate in directions that cannot be foreseen today, But these are exciting times with library services at the nucleus of the information explosion. It is in­ cumbent upon library administrators to harness these energetic changes, to remain flexible, and to seize the opportunities presented. Patron-use software in academ ic library collections By Denise M. Beaubien Online Coordinator, Central Science Library University o f Florida E rich Kesse Preservation O fficer University o f Florida B ru ce Em erton * Education R eferen ce Librarian California State Polytechnic University Alice L. P rim ack B I Coordinator, Central Science Library University o f Florida an d Colleen Seale Online C oordinator for Social Sciences and Humanities University o f Florida The University of Florida guidelines for purchasing, cataloging, circulating, and preserving software. ASoftware Study Committee at the University of Flori da Libraries was appointed in the summer of 1986 to study the desirability of purchasing patron­ use computer software and to examine and make recommendations about the Libraries’ role in pro­ viding computerized information to our user com­ munity. This committee developed policy recom­ mendations to guide current and future purchases and services. The following questions, which were given to us as “the charge to the committee” were used as a springboard for our examination: l . Should we purchase software? What kinds? 2 . If so, where should we house it? 3. Should software circulate to the public? * Formerly at the University of Florida L i­ braries.