Interlibrary loan and document delivery in North American health sciences libraries during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic

Objective: The study purpose was to understand how early months of the COVID-19 pandemic altered interlibrary loan (ILL) and document delivery (DD) in North American health science libraries (HSLs), specifically the decision-making and workflow adjustments associated with accessing their own collections and obtaining content not available via ILL. Methods: Researchers distributed an online 26-question survey through 24 health science library email lists from January 6-February 7, 2021. Respondents reported their library’s ILL and DD activities from March-August 2020, including ILL/DD usage and policies, collection access, decision-making, and workflow adjustments. In addition to calculating frequencies, cross-tabulation and statistical tests were performed to test a priori potential associations. Two researchers independently and thematically analyzed responses to the 2 open-ended questions and reached consensus on themes. Results: Hospital libraries represented 52% (n=226/431) of respondents, along with 42% academic (n=179) and 6% (n=26) multi-type or other special. Only 1% (n=5) closed completely with no remote services, but many, 45% (n=194), ceased ILL of print materials. More than half (n=246/423; 58%) agreed that ILL requests likely to be filled from print remained unfilled more than is typical. Open-ended questions yielded 5 themes on ILL/DD staffing, setup, and systems; 6 on impacts for libraries and library users. Conclusion: Lack of communication regarding collection availability and staffing resulted in delayed or unfilled requests. Hospital and academic libraries made similar decisions about continuing services but reported different experiences in areas such as purchasing digital content. Hybrid ILL/DD workflows may continue for managing these services

Identifying customer expectations is key to evidence based service delivery

As librarians and information professionals we share a common rationale: to deliver enhanced services for our customers. The importance of this is self-evident - if we don’t have customers we don't have a job. We therefore put our services at peril if we don’t put the customer at the heart of what we are trying to do. The now-familiar description of evidence based library and information practice reminds us that we need "to integrate user-reported, practitioner-observed and research-derived evidence as an explicit basis for decision-making" (Booth, 2006). This begs several important questions - Who are our users? How can we best capture reports from these users regarding their expected outcomes? How might we as library practitioners observe (and act upon!) what our users require? In attempting to answer such questions we discover potential value in methodologies with a business orientation; utilising tools from the commercial sector such as Customer Value Discovery research (McKnight, 2007a; McKnight & Berrington, 2008)

The relationship between ILL/document supply and journal subscriptions

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide insights into the relationship between ILL/ document supply and journal subscriptions and to assess recent trends in the ILL service. Design/methodology/Approach: This survey is based on data from the ILL service conducted over the five year period 2005-2009 through the Italian NILDE (Network for Inter-Library Document Exchange) network. Findings: This article bears out important previous findings that ILL is not used as a surrogate for journal subscriptions. This is supported by the analysis of a broad number of titles and over a wide time-range. On the contrary, analysis of data transactions, particularly of the most requested journals, can bring about positive effects on new title acquisitions and negotiations with publishers. This paper also shows, at least for Italy, an overall growth and vitality of ILL, in spite of the widespread availability of e-journals acquired through consortia purchasing. Originality/Value: An insight into the relationship between ILL and journal subscriptions in Italy, a country where few studies have been carried out, and none at all for such a large number of libraries and transactions

A formally verified proof of the prime number theorem

The prime number theorem, established by Hadamard and de la Vall'ee Poussin independently in 1896, asserts that the density of primes in the positive integers is asymptotic to 1 / ln x. Whereas their proofs made serious use of the methods of complex analysis, elementary proofs were provided by Selberg and Erd"os in 1948. We describe a formally verified version of Selberg's proof, obtained using the Isabelle proof assistant.Comment: 23 page

Teaching Patrons to Fish: The Educational Value of Cancelling Requests for Locally Available Materials

Expansive document delivery service for locally available materials is becoming increasingly popular, but is a learning component lost with the implementation of this service? In this study, the authors compare data from two institutions, one that provides an unadvertised document delivery service without instruction, and another that cancels requests for locally available materials with an instructional component. The behavior of each institution\u27s patrons over a 4-year period is analyzed and found to differ at statistically significant levels. These findings will be useful for interlibrary loan policy makers who are considering whether to implement document delivery for locally available items

Extending the 5S Framework of Digital Libraries to support Complex Objects, Superimposed Information, and Content-Based Image Retrieval Services

Advanced services in digital libraries (DLs) have been developed and widely used to address the required capabilities of an assortment of systems as DLs expand into diverse application domains. These systems may require support for images (e.g., Content-Based Image Retrieval), Complex (information) Objects, and use of content at fine grain (e.g., Superimposed Information). Due to the lack of consensus on precise theoretical definitions for those services, implementation efforts often involve ad hoc development, leading to duplication and interoperability problems. This article presents a methodology to address those problems by extending a precisely specified minimal digital library (in the 5S framework) with formal definitions of aforementioned services. The theoretical extensions of digital library functionality presented here are reinforced with practical case studies as well as scenarios for the individual and integrative use of services to balance theory and practice. This methodology has implications that other advanced services can be continuously integrated into our current extended framework whenever they are identified. The theoretical definitions and case study we present may impact future development efforts and a wide range of digital library researchers, designers, and developers

Preparing sparse solvers for exascale computing.

Sparse solvers provide essential functionality for a wide variety of scientific applications. Highly parallel sparse solvers are essential for continuing advances in high-fidelity, multi-physics and multi-scale simulations, especially as we target exascale platforms. This paper describes the challenges, strategies and progress of the US Department of Energy Exascale Computing project towards providing sparse solvers for exascale computing platforms. We address the demands of systems with thousands of high-performance node devices where exposing concurrency, hiding latency and creating alternative algorithms become essential. The efforts described here are works in progress, highlighting current success and upcoming challenges. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Numerical algorithms for high-performance computational science'

Diverse small molecule inhibitors of human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease APE1 identified from a screen of a large public collection.

The major human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease APE1 plays a pivotal role in the repair of base damage via participation in the DNA base excision repair (BER) pathway. Increased activity of APE1, often observed in tumor cells, is thought to contribute to resistance to various anticancer drugs, whereas down-regulation of APE1 sensitizes cells to DNA damaging agents. Thus, inhibiting APE1 repair endonuclease function in cancer cells is considered a promising strategy to overcome therapeutic agent resistance. Despite ongoing efforts, inhibitors of APE1 with adequate drug-like properties have yet to be discovered. Using a kinetic fluorescence assay, we conducted a fully-automated high-throughput screen (HTS) of the NIH Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR), as well as additional public collections, with each compound tested as a 7-concentration series in a 4 µL reaction volume. Actives identified from the screen were subjected to a panel of confirmatory and counterscreen tests. Several active molecules were identified that inhibited APE1 in two independent assay formats and exhibited potentiation of the genotoxic effect of methyl methanesulfonate with a concomitant increase in AP sites, a hallmark of intracellular APE1 inhibition; a number of these chemotypes could be good starting points for further medicinal chemistry optimization. To our knowledge, this represents the largest-scale HTS to identify inhibitors of APE1, and provides a key first step in the development of novel agents targeting BER for cancer treatment