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Introduction

Document delivery to the desktop via the Internet is certainly an improvement over conventional means of document delivery. It is a delivery means that is faster, more reliable, cheaper and convenient than mail or fax. When changing from the conventional means of document delivery to Internet delivery, there are several considerations a library or document delivery service may want to take into account. These include:

• The expense of purchasing scanning hardware and software.
• The expense of an Internet connection.
• The potential time needed to train a patron population in using software for viewing and printing electronic documents.
• The potential requirement to deliver to a wide variety of computers and operating systems used by patrons.
• The potential need to install document delivery software and perhaps upgrade it occasionally on patron computers.

In the list above, software is an important factor that document delivery services need to consider when adopting Internet document delivery. This report addresses a software program called DocView, that libraries and their patrons are using to facilitate document delivery over the Internet. DocView is freely available over the Internet at this URL:

Download the DocView software

The Communications Engineering Branch of the National Library of Medicine’s Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications began an R&D program in document delivery software in 1993. DocView is the first product of this R&D. It runs on a patron’s computer under any of the Microsoft Windows^TM operating systems. It allows the library patron to receive documents sent over the Internet via Ariel^TM FTP transmission. DocView can also be used in conjunction with MIME email client software to view attached TIFF files sent by Ariel systems. The Ariel system software is available from Research Libraries Group.

Beta testing of DocView began in August 1995 in the Washington, D.C. area and it spread to six other sites by late spring 1996. Initial comments received from beta testers were used to improve DocView’s functionality. These included the addition of the document management and messaging facilities. After the software underwent several design iterations, the DocView developers decided to expand the beta testing. During the summer of 1996, product testing was extended to twenty-six sites in six countries and three continents.

By the time the DocView beta test officially ended in December 1997, 80 organizations in 14 countries had become beta test sites. Most were using the Ariel system software for document delivery. Each organization gave DocView software to one or more patrons to test out the concept of document delivery from Ariel systems directly to the patron’s desktop. This is a breakdown of the test sites:

• University Libraries: 53
• Government Libraries: 10
• Independent Libraries: 4
• Corporate Libraries: 4
• Hospital Libraries: 3
• Document Delivery Services: 6

Of these test sites there were 18 biomedical organizations, representing 22% of the total.

DocView’s developers created an electronic user survey to aid in further product development. The survey software was based on Raosoft^TM Survey, a DOS software product that runs under all of the Windows operating systems. Raosoft Survey allows a questionnaire to be created, and includes tools for collecting and analyzing survey answers. DocView was modified to present the survey questionnaire to the user forty-five days after initial installation. After the user exercised the option to anonymously complete the survey, DocView returned it automatically over the Internet to a computer in the R&D labs at NLM.

This report summarizes and analyzes responses from 90 anonymous participants received between July 1996 and April 1998. The survey period covered 4,050 days of use, or nearly 11 person years. The responding population is an unknown fraction of the total number of individuals who tested and used DocView. The survey was originally set up to query only users who received documents via Ariel FTP. This is because DocView sent the survey results back to NLM using Ariel FTP. There were a large number of DocView testers who received documents via MIME email, and who used DocView as a TIFF viewer for these documents. These individuals were not surveyed due to the built-in limitations of the survey transmission mechanism. However, it is likely that the survey results would be similar for this second group of DocView users, since only the method of document delivery is different.

DocView’s developers have found the survey results to be very instructive in the design of a new generation of document delivery software. This report is being made publicly available here to help both libraries and potential new users of DocView to decide whether they would like to use DocView for document delivery to the desktop.

The survey is composed of seven parts:

• Computer Experience and Job Function
• Computer Description
• DocView Usage
• Impressions of DocView
• DocView Display (Screen) Presentation
• Learning to use DocView
• DocView Capabilities

Each part consists of two or more questions, each usually having a multiple choice answer. Some questions permitted written answers. A short analysis is given for the responses to each question and a brief summary is given at the end of this report.