Impact of DOCLINE on interlibrary loan service at the National Library of Medicine

In March 1985, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) began implementation of DOCLINE, its automated interlibrary loan request routing and referral system. By the end of fiscal year (FY) 1987, over 1,400 biomedical libraries in all seven regions of the Regional Medical Library network were using the system. This report summarizes the findings of an analysis of the interlibrary loan (ILL) requests received in FY 1987, comparing the results with a similar analysis done in FY 1984 to describe any changes in the requests or service which might be attributable to DOCLINE implementation. DOCLINE has had a substantial impact upon ILL loan service at NLM. An increase in the number of ILL requests (35% over FY 1984) can be attributed to the speed and ease with which requests may be routed to NLM through DOCLINE. Requests which cannot be filled by local or regional libraries are automatically routed by the system to NLM as the library of last resort. NLM's fill rate for serial requests has declined, however, from 78% filled in FY 1984 to 67% filled in FY 1987. Some of the decline results from the 11,000 requests that NLM did not fill because the borrowing libraries were not willing to pay the NLM charge for filling the loans.     

Managing the Freedom of Information Act and federal information policy: The Reagan years

This article examines management of the Freedom of Information Act and how Federal information policy changed during the eight years of the Reagan administration. The article analyzes the 1986 F.O.I.A. amendments and, particularly, the fee waiver provisions; examines the varying congressional and executive interpretations of these amendments; and considers the Reagan administration's skillful use of traditional managerial tools in new ways to shape its policy and implement its philosophy.     

THE PRESS AND CANDIDATE IMAGES

An examination of the news images of US presidential candidatessuggests that journalists portray candidates in ways consistentwith their position in the race. Strong candidates were generallygiven strong news images and weak candidates were saddled withweak images. Significantly, this pattern held also for the samecandidate if his position in the race changed. In 1988 Bush'snews image went from weak to strong when he surged ahead inthe polls during the general election. Such news images appearto affect voters' images of the candidates: to some degree,voters accept journalists' portrayals of the candidates.