Electronic document delivery - The corporate competitive edge!

In today's competitive business environment, factors such as reduced funding, global competition and technological change have placed pressure on libraries and information centres to turn towards new methods of providing services. Publishers of scientific and technical information predict that journals will remain their primary product for some time to come, despite the emergence of electronic journals. Library collections will continue to decline with the result of increased customer demand for faster turnaround of document delivery services including delivery of documents to their desktop. Libraries must maximise their investment in their collections and in their new technologies by developing efficient, effective, quality and timely document delivery services to the customer desktop. SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals R&D has begun to formalise business processes, communication, co-operation and resource sharing among its six libraries to meet this goal. This presentation will describe the challenges, issues and accomplishments of progressing electronic document delivery within a corporate environment - making the competitive edge.