One small community hospital library's successful outsourcing of document delivery: an ongoing study

When DOCLINE was implemented in 1985, community hospital librarians were beginning to feel the economic pressures of the changing health care arena. However, staff and resources were often sufficient or plentiful. Now, fifteen years after the creation of DOCLINE, many existing small hospitals either no longer have a librarian, an assistant is managing the library, the librarian is managing one or more libraries of an integrated system, or the number of librarians has been reduced. A system that is heavily staff dependent is no longer feasible. In addition, as the role of the community hospital librarian evolves into one of instructor and patient education liaison, a system that does not permit the librarian to expand such services will be detrimental to the entire library program. Following is a discussion of one small community hospital's decision to outsource document delivery services as a result of staffing changes and the expansion of additional library programs.