60 -
length of an article in the applied sciences. If the article is
longer you are separately invoiced from the 17. page on (regular
ors are billed for surcharge about once a year). The turn-around-
time varies according to the possible procedures in copying from
| to 5 days + postal delivery.
One order form is sold for DM 10,- to clients in Germany, DM 13,"
in the European countries and DM 16,- for airmail overseas. TIB
is glad, of course, to sell more than one single order form at
one time.
All these three leading national document centers are as well serving
an international clientele. And all three of them apply modern
technologies.
The latest hit is "online ordering". Here the results of a search,
the references, may be converted into orders without rewriting
or retyping the bibliographic data on a Spectat order form, there-
by often introducing mistakes. The procedure is as follows: at
the end of your search you have to mark the interesting references
and to choose the supplier in whom you trust to react quick and
positively. These references are transferred to an online order
file, often called an electronic mailbox. The supplier is regularly
calling all new requests from this file under his acronym like
BLLD or TIBORDER. These orders are processed immediately and the
documents shipped the same day. Unfortunately suppliers have no
influence on postal delivery of certain countries.
The technology for online ordering is mainly the same for all
databases that are already offering this service. Apart from this
the differences are numerous. These are partly caused by the
suppliers and partly by the database.
The BLLD, for example, is supplier to DIALOG and to SDC-ORBIT. But
this service is restricted to users outside the United Kingdom and
Ireland. Furthermore users are urged to establish deposit accounts
in form of books of coupons with the BLLD. Infrequent users may
request to be invoiced, but there is a 10$ surcharge. Users with
deposit accounts have to pay unit costs of & 2.20, one unit valueing
up to 10 pages. Each additional (up to) 10 pages require a further
unit or coupon.
CNRS-Informascience offers online ordering for PASCAL on Questel and
for ESA/IRS. As with ne BLLD the user has to establish a deposit
account by buying a book of coupons or vignettes (minimum 25
vignettes, Ffrs 6,- each). Satisfied orders will be deducted from
this account as long as it lasts. Again as with BLLD this is no
"Yush service". It is just another way of transmitting orders.
High speed is the aim of the German central technical library in
Hannover, when serving online orders. TIB Hannover was among the
first suppliers when DIALOG introduced the worldwide possibility
of online ordering of full texts in December 1979. Here the user
has a looseleaf manual with "yellow sheets" giving details on
scope of service, options available, charges, and a contact address.
For the time being the list of suppliers consists of about 70
addresses and shows many information specialists, research centers,
Tehnzen 4