Dialog eLinks document delivery pilot

Ben Toth, Director of the National Knowledge Service, has been in negotiation with the Copyright Licensing Agency over the NHS copyright license. Unfortunately no agreement has been reached and the NHS will no longer have a license.

At this stage it is not clear how this will impact on the National Library for Health’s strategic aim to develop a national document delivery service. I am currently managing a NKS funded document requesting pilot based on Dialog eLinks. This system has taken 6 months to develop and is being rolled out across the northwest.

With the end of the copyright license, I am unclear about the legal position of an automated system. For this reason I have decided that the document requesting functionality of the Dialog eLinks system is to be disconnected with immediate effect. I sincerely hope that this is a temporary disconnection and that once legal advice is sort and given, the system can be re-activated. Clearly this is a huge disappointment, but until I know better, it is the only option available.

The uploading of paper journal holding into eLinks is still possible and guidance notes on how to do this will be available in the next few days. I would still encourage all library managers to upload their journal holding, so their users can see that a journal is held in their local library. It is only the requesting functionality that should not be switched on.

I would like to thank Ingrid Evans, Steve Glover, Gavin Coney and the Dialog development team for all their hard work over the last 6 months. Work that I hope can be re-activated soon.