From a collective catalogue (ACNP) to the Network Inter-Library Document Exchange (NILDE): a way to share resources and to improve user services

Abstract

This paper is about two important Italian web-resources for document delivery: ACNP (i.e. Archivio Collettivo Nazionale dei Periodici), the collective serials Italian catalogue, and NILDE, a document transmission network based on Internet technologies and standardized operations. Our library is part of the database of ACNP since 2002, which has allowed us to better exploit our resources and to meet successfully our users’ requests. Results have been progressively improving from the end of 2003, when we joined the NILDE project. Participation in this network has supported the working flow of our activities in the entire DD process – from the request to the delivery of a document – considerably elevating the Document Delivery Service (DDS) management performance. To show you how we can obtain such operative results, we will describe both the structure of the collective serials Italian catalogue (ACNP) and the architecture of the e-mail/web gateway server used for NILDE. ACNP, developed by Italian National Research Council (CNR) and by the University of Bologna, has a Web OPAC where users can retrieve serials from the Italian libraries participating to the project – presently rated to be 2510. Even though ACNP assures by itself an efficient exchange of the documents, NILDE permits further costs reduction, time shortening and simplification of the documents transmission procedure. NILDE is a web-based Document Delivery Service that has been developed by the Research Area of Bologna Central Library in order to experiment the use and to suggest a model of DD service promoting inter-library mutual exchange and cooperation procedure. The high performance of the Network is possible especially because NILDE is accessible through ACNP, allowing the librarian to check which libraries participate to the Network among those that have the document he needs. Once checked the datum, the librarian can find out which library offers the best conditions and finalize his request accordingly, simply clicking on the link to NILDE.