Loansome Doc for the Consumer

Abstract

The National Library of Medicine has made great strides in making clinical medical information available to the public, beginning with the 1997 introduction of Grateful Med and PubMed free through the Internet. What has remained difficult for many consumers is the acquisition of full-text clinical journal articles. A search of the National Library of Medicine database of libraries offering Loansome Doc, its online document ordering service, indicates that twenty-one California libraries provide Loansome Doc services to the general public; however, some of those institutions' policies-pricing, pre-paid accounts, etc.-serve as barriers to potential users. Redwood Health Library, a consumer health library in Northern California, began offering low-cost Loansome Doc services to the general public in September 2000, with the goal of making the process as user-friendly as possible. This paper describes Redwood Health Library's first year experience as a Loansome Doc provider-the benefits and pitfalls-as well as the results of a survey of its Loansome Doc users conducted in April 2001. Thus far, Loansome Doc services have paid for themselves without a large increase in workload. It has also made clinical literature available to a wider audience, the composition of which has resulted in some surprises.

Key Words:

• Consumer health
• document delivery
• cost-benefit analysis
• questionnnaires