British Library launches new secure electronic delivery service

Citation

Blake, M. (2004), "British Library launches new secure electronic delivery service", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322bab.010

British Library launches new secure electronic delivery service

The British Library launched its new and ground-breaking secure electronic delivery service at Online Information, 2003. Harnessing the strength of the British Library’s collections, the service gives customers fast access to over one hundred million items – providing a one-stop shop for information.

This means that almost anything from the Library’s huge collections – whether born digital, in print or in microform – can be delivered to a desktop within two hours. Born digital material can be sent almost instantly, saving time and money. Unlike many suppliers, the Library holds the vast majority of the items listed in its catalogues, with most available for secure electronic delivery. That means it offers unrivalled coverage and speed of service, day or night – supplying most orders directly from its collections. In fact, the British Library serves not only the world’s research communities, but other information providers as well.

The secure Electronic Delivery service is based on Adobe Reader^® 6.0 software (set to become the industry standard) and Relais™ International scanning and delivery technology. Since the Library launched the world’s first fully copyright compliant secure electronic delivery service – for digital documents – in December 2002, it has succeeded in obtaining extensive agreements for secure electronic delivery with many of the world’s leading scientific publishers. Over 3,800 journal titles are available for instant electronic delivery.

During 40 years at the forefront of document supply, the Library has delivered over 100 million documents. The Library’s collection includes over 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 US dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings. It also houses one of the world’s best selections of US government documents, and a collection of over 2,000 miles of microfilm – including NASA and NTIS reports and congressional hearings. The whole collection is truly international with over 30 percent published in the US and 70 percent of total stock collected from outside the UK.

Customers will be able to choose from a range of delivery options – with secure electronic delivery available within two hours of ordering if needed. Investment in specially adapted digital scanning stations means the Library can provide high resolution electronic documents, whilst the addition of high speed Xerox printers ensures top quality hard-copy documents for postal delivery.