Kansas State Vet Med: Enhancing Access with Ariel

Abstract

Providing enhanced access to biomedical literature in a timely and accurate manner is the primary goal of this project. The Veterinary Medical Library at Kansas State University has a collection of over 40,000 books and journals covering many topics in veterinary medicine and human medicine, the human-animal bond, and consumer health information. The VM Library currently provides access to literature to a broad clientele beyond the boundaries of the university such as other medical libraries, health care professionals including physicians and veterinarians, and the general public by participating in DOCLINE (National Library of Medicine's interlibrary loan program). Providing a reliable and more expedient way to transmit copies of this body of literature would make the information in the collection more valuable to the wide population of researchers and medical libraries. Many libraries that request documents from the Veterinary Medical Library have asked for Internet transmission of their requests. Implementing Ariel 3.01 will allow the VM Library to transmit these documents in that manner. Ariel 3.01 will further provide the capability of forwarding documents ultimately to the desktop of the end user and provide color copies of pictures and graphics to requestors. Ariel 3.01 will be implemented by purchasing the hardware and software as recommended by Research Libraries Group. A long-term objective of the Veterinary Medical Library of Kansas State University will be to become a participant in Loansome Doc to provide even wider access to the biomedical literature.