The impact of PrintDOCs 6 months on from launch

About the impact of PrintDOCs 6 months on from the launch.

Single union list for print journals

Knowledge for Healthcare 2021-26 seeks to make optimal use of high-quality knowledge resources at the point of need. These resources should be quickly and easily discoverable through a robust infrastructure and streamlined systems and processes. Streamlining document requesting and supply services is a specific intervention.

In 2023, we introduced INCDocs to handle open access articles and those available from the ejournal collections of NHS libraries in England.

Many of these libraries also have print journal collections. To maximise the value of the NHS CLA Licence Plus, it made sense to streamline the process for requesting articles from these collections too.

However, we didn’t know whether the benefit of doing this would outweigh the costs. We needed a way of measuring the number of requests for articles from print holdings to check whether it justified the costs associated with streamlining this part of the document supply process.

Unfortunately, there is no standard way of recording requests in the NHS. Some libraries use an ILL or library management system to process their document supply requests; others rely on email and a spreadsheet. When libraries make document supply requests from other libraries, they will record the library which supplied the article but not whether the journal from which it was obtained was electronic or print. From the requesting library’s point of view, it doesn’t matter.

We needed to find a way of determining whether requests were being satisfied from print holdings and we needed a reliable source of request data. Libraries in three of the INC networks routinely used a system to make requests of other libraries in the network.

The INC scheme is a reciprocal inter-library loan and document supply scheme for NHS libraries in England. It comprises 6 regional networks. The three regions we chose were PANDDA in the North using the PANDDA Union List and LENDS (London) and MIDS (Midlands), both using the LAWMUNION system.

In both the PANDDA Union List and LAWMUNION, it was not always clear which journal titles were print, and which were electronic. The only way to be certain was to cross-check the titles being used in requests against the electronic holdings listed in each supplying library’s NHS Knowledge and Library Hub instance. These holdings populate the full text link resolver and INCDocs.

Request data covered the 3 month period between 9 May 2023, when INCDocs went live, to 8 August 2023. Of the 1,261 requests made during this period, an average of 32.73% were satisfied from print and 67.27% from electronic holdings.

From previous process costing work on document supply requests, and INCDocs data, we knew the percentage of requests from INCDocs, INC scheme libraries, Reprints Desk, the British Library and other sources.

The part 2 annual statistical return covering 1 April 2023 to 31March 2024, showed there were 143,835 document supply request made during the period.