On-line delivery of research products

Research institutions are under increasing pressure to provide customers with fast and easy access to scientific publications. Responding to a customer base that has grown exponentially over the last decade, roughly 140 USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists are now able to provide research results almost as soon as their manuscripts are released for publication. Using the Internet, the SRS Webmaster helps distribute a quarterly catalog of publications to more than 1,000 e-mail addressees worldwide. I-Ie and other employees in the SRS Communications Office also maintain a Web-to-database interface that allows R&D customers to search for publications by title, author, subject matter description, or date; and then to view those documents on-line in PDF (Portable Document Format). Before this system was established, customer requests for publications would always take days-sometimes even weeks-to fill. Now, with the use of an active server interface to a Station database, SRS customers have almost instant access to all on-line publications, as well as an archive listing of all SRS publications. This system provides an expeditious and cost-efficient way to manage thousands of records and electronic copies of publication reprints.