Document Delivery


“Everyone registering for borrowing within CUNY+ is encouraged to supply his or her e-mail address so that we may send overdue and hold notices to readers electronically. Most readers are delighted to comply.” Miriam Deutch, Associate Librarian for Research & Access Services

The University supports the use of commercial document suppliers by each of the campus libraries. In 2000-2001 Brooklyn spent $31,389.33 for 1,666 articles, for an average rose of$18.84. Hunter and Brooklyn are the largest consumers of this service, which (in the interest of cost containment) is limited to faculty and PhD students.

  • Document Supply: The Need to Cap Spending

    • In the fall 2001 the University’s Office of Library Services found itself about $35,000 shy of the sum needed to renew the e-content packages funded by the central office. Where to find the needed funds? When staff looked at the office’s spending in other areas, it was clear that expenditures for document delivery were rising steadily each year, peaking at around $131,000 in 2000-2001. If document supply costs could be capped at around $100,000 a year, the problem of funding electronic content could be, if not solved, at least forestalled.

    For a variety of reasons CUNY’s chief librarians were optimistic that the budget for commercially supplied documents could be reduced without doing serious harm to this important program.

  • When the service was first introduced, the University’s libraries had access to little electronic content. Today, Brooklyn offers more than 14,000 full-text e-journals.
  • It was not always easy for staff to determine which articles faculty requested via document supply were actually available in electronic format. Today, our full-text electronic journals database http://fulltext.aitlink.net/ has solved this problem.

    • The Council of Chief Librarians has developed what it believes to be an equitable way of distributing the $30,000-$40,000 cut suggested by the central office, and Brooklyn will reduce its spending from ca. $30,000 to around $22,000. We believe this will have only a slight impact on the commercial document supply program.

  • New Technologies Enhance Document Supply

    • We have high hopes for the WinFax software installed this fall. Its purpose is to enable documents to be sent electronically from our fax machine to readers’ e-mail accounts. At this point, it can handle short documents–one or two pages–but still balks at longer pieces.