DOCLINE, the system medical librarians use for interlibrary loan, is celebrating its 21st birthday. They've dressed up the opening screen a little, puttting a birthday hat on their mascot, Tugger the dog. They have desktop wallpapers available to celebrate.
DOCLINE is active behind the scenes when doctors have a difficult case and need an article right away to treat a patient. It allows researchers to get articles that will more fully inform their research and help them design and conduct experiments. Thousands of medical librarians are behind the scenes ticking away at keys, and DOCLINE provides an easy interface for finding other libraries that own the needed reference, ordering it, and receiving it in hand. It is linked to PubMed, allowing for a search to be conducted and orders made from that platform. According to their website, DOCLINE includes 3,260 libraries, 1.4 million holdings, and 2.3 million requests. Think about that. Ever since it went onto the web it has been especially nice, with updates making it only better. It's easy to use, for something that has so much information available, and allows librarians to make requests in seconds that used to take days by hand. Okay, I'll finish singing its praises for now, but yes, happy birthday DOCLINE. :)
| Unshelved | by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum |
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