Analysis of National Library of Medicine (NLM) DOCLINE® Interlibrary Loan System Request Patterns during Selected Public Health Events

Abstract

DOCLINE®, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) interlibrary loan (ILL) request system, sought to better understand its role in providing information access during public health events (PHEs). Such data can guide service improvement, especially when connecting the public health community to the latest research during such incidents. Four U.S. public health outbreaks were used to measure DOCLINE’s capacity to support information seeking behaviors: requests during the Summer 2019 measles outbreak; the Fall 2019 e-cigarette lung injury event; the 2018–2019 influenza season; and early stages of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. NLM Medical Subject Headings were used to identify related requests. A team of NLM librarians analyzed these for trends in request volume, geographic and institution type, and content. While the number of PHE-related requests did not make up a large percentage of the total placed, there were identifiable increases during the selected periods. These originated from a variety of geographic locations, with some noticeable intersection with outbreak areas. Hospitals initiated the most requests. This investigation provides evidence that DOCLINE data can be used to drive system development and that a targeted ILL system with rapid turnaround times is an especially valuable library resource during PHEs.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1072303X.2021.1934216 .

Keywords:

• Data analysis
• data science
• DOCLINE®
• documentation
• evaluation
• interlibrary loan
• public health event (PHE)
• U.S. National Library of Medicine

Data availability statement

Data generated from this study are included in the supplementary materials. Data about public health outbreak cases and geographic spread were found through the CDC website.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program at the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.This research was supported in part by an appointment to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Research Participation Program. This program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM). ORISE is managed by ORAU under DOE contract number DE-SC0014664. All opinions expressed in this paper are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of NLM, DOE, or ORAU/ORISE.