The impact of PrintDOCs 6 months after launch

Single union list for print journals

Knowledge for Healthcare 2021-26 seeks to make optimal use of high-quality knowledge resources at the point of need. These resources should be quickly and easily discoverable through a robust infrastructure and streamlined systems and processes. Streamlining document requesting and supply services is a specific intervention.

In 2023, we introduced INCDocs to handle open access articles and those available from the e-journal collections of NHS libraries in England.

Many of these libraries also have print journal collections. To maximise the value of the NHS CLA Licence Plus, it made sense to streamline the process for requesting articles from these collections too.

However, we didn’t know whether the benefit of doing this would outweigh the costs. We needed a way of measuring the number of requests for articles from print holdings to check whether it justified the costs associated with streamlining this part of the document supply process.

Unfortunately, there is no standard way of recording requests in the NHS. Some libraries use an ILL or library management system to process their document supply requests; others rely on email and a spreadsheet. When libraries make document supply requests from other libraries, they will record the library which supplied the article but not whether the journal from which it was obtained was electronic or print. From the requesting library’s point of view, it doesn’t matter.

We needed to find a way of determining whether requests were being satisfied from print holdings and we needed a reliable source of request data. Libraries in three of the INC networks routinely used a system to make requests of other libraries in the network.

The INC scheme is a reciprocal inter-library loan and document supply scheme for NHS libraries in England. It comprises 6 regional networks. The three regions we chose were PANDDA in the North using the PANDDA Union List and LENDS (London) and MIDS (Midlands), both using the LAWMUNION system.

In both the PANDDA Union List and LAWMUNION, it was not always clear which journal titles were print, and which were electronic. The only way to be certain was to cross-check the titles being used in requests against the electronic holdings listed in each supplying library’s NHS Knowledge and Library Hub instance. These holdings populate the full-text link resolver and INCDocs.

Request data covered the 3-month period between 9 May 2023, when INCDocs went live, to 8 August 2023. Of the 1,261 requests made during this period, an average of 32.73% were satisfied from print and 67.27% from electronic holdings

From previous process costing work on document supply requests, and INCDocs data, we knew the percentage of requests from INCDocs, INC scheme libraries, Reprints Desk, the British Library and other sources.

The part 2 annual statistical return covering 1 April 2023-31March 2024, showed there were 143,835 document supply request made during the period.

Number of requests from each source

Source

Percentage of
all requests

Number of
requests INCDocs 49.14% 70,677 %INC scheme 17.87% 25,704 Other sources 14.20% 20,432 British Library 12.37% 17,795 Reprints Desk 6.42% 9,227 Total 143,885

Extrapolating for the national picture, we estimated that 8,413 requests are likely to be satisfied using PrintDOCs. This showed there was enough demand to justify streamlining document supply from print journals.

It was decided to set up a national union list for print journals, PrintDOCs. As INCDocs was the place to check for availability of articles from NHS e-journal collections, PrintDOCs would do the same for print journal collections. The SINC Group, which has strategic oversight for inter-library loan and document supply in the NHS in England, recommended that PrintDOCs should be hosted on Koha rather than one of the existing regional ILL requesting systems. This library management system was being used by 6 of the 8 NHS regions and so would better integrate with the developments NHSE had commissioned to streamline inter-library loan and document supply in NHS libraries.

A task and finish group was set up to manage the PrintDOCs project. This involved regular meetings with developers and data experts from Open Fifth and with representatives from all NHS regions. Journal holdings data was to be extracted from 5 separate systems: PANDDA; LAWMUNION; ELMS; KSS; SWIMS.

The group set standards for catalogue records for the journals being included in PrintDOCs, tested the data and recommended changes to the interface to make finding holdings easier. Holdings data in the regional catalogues needed to be brought up to the agreed standards to be able to be loaded into PrintDOCs in a uniform way. It was launched successfully on 1 October 2024.

Print and electronic journal catalogue records were subsequently removed from the old regional catalogues and the PANDDA Union List and LAWMUNION were retired on 31 December.

Quantitative impact of PrintDOCs

After 6 months use of PrintDOCs we decided to measure its quantitative and qualitative impact. The former looked at the number of requests completed, and the time saved in the document supply process by only having to search one catalogue. The latter looked at its impact on the library service.

The NHS Costing Framework enables KLS to calculate the costs of providing a library service to an organisation. A library service like document supply is broken down into its component steps. Each step is timed and recorded for a sample of the activity. The timings are totted up for each step used to source from a library’s own collections, other NHS libraries, and non-NHS libraries. The timings are applied to total annual activity and multiplied by the staff costs, to get a total cost for the service as a whole.

We used process costing data from before the launch of INCDocs against which we could compare a new set of data we obtained for the time taken to process PrintDOCs requests.

Timings for the time it took to check the availability of supply for document supply requests were received from 10 NHS Knowledge and Library Services. For PrintDOCs, checking availability at NHS libraries averaged 19.87 seconds per request. The time to check availability of supply in the 6 INC scheme catalogues was between 99 and 426 seconds per request, depending on the number of catalogues needing to be searched.

During the period 1 October 2024 to 31 March 2025, 928 requests were sourced from PrintDOCs in East of England, London and Kent, Surrey and Sussex libraries using the Koha ILL module.

No of libraries No of PrintDOCs requests No of INCDocs requests No of other
requests Total requests

% of PrintDOCs
requests

ELMS 15 276 4,418 386 5,311 5.20 KSS 14 235 3,875 322 4,651 5.05 LHL 9 69 1,689 651 2,391 2.89 Total 38 580 9,982 1,359 12,353 4.7

There are 590 uncategorised requests, some of which will also have been sourced from PrintDOCs.

These figures needed to be extrapolated for a full year, for other NHS libraries in the regions not using the ILL module as well as those in the other 5 NHS regions: North West, North East, Yorkshire, Midlands and the South West.

Based on the latest available data for document supply nationally, see the table above, 4.70% of the 143,885 total in 2023-2024 for all requests is 6,756.

In the standard process for handling article requests, after INCDocs and PrintDOCs, other sources may be used to check holdings availability. These might include Reprints Desk, the British Library or the Royal Society of Medicine. If these other sources are used, PrintDOCs would have had to be checked to determine the lack of availability there. Before PrintDOCs, KLS members of staff would have had to check all 6 regional catalogues.

Thus, the benefit of PrintDOCs could be extended to requests obtained from the sources of supply which would have followed the INC scheme.

In the three systems listed in table 2, 1,359 articles were sourced from outside INCDocs and PrintDOCs. This represents 11% of the total or 15,829 of the 143,885 total for 2023-24.

The total amount of time saved by PrintDOCs is therefore estimated at 2,228 hours per year.

Staff at different pay bands may participate in part or all of the document supply process. The process costing work enabled us to calculate the proportion of the activity done by each band.

In terms of cost savings, this is estimated to be £73,548.

Qualitative impact

We asked KLS staff across England to tell us about the impact PrintDOCs has had on their service.

Most feedback emphasised the benefits of only having a single catalogue to search for print holdings.

One service mentioned that PrintDOCs has saved money in that they have found articles there which previously they would have sourced from Reprints Desk. It is sometimes the only source of supply for articles, particularly older ones, which makes it invaluable part of the document supply ecosystem.

With the library details included in PrintDOCs, there is no checking HLISD for a library’s email address which saves further time.

PrintDOCs’ layout and ease of use were cited as being of great benefit to staff who previously relied on an unwieldy spreadsheet.

Another positive is that it makes it easier to check journal titles for their rarity or otherwise in NHS libraries. This is useful when making collection development decisions.

Some services have seen a noticeable increase in the number of print journal requests since PrintDOCs launched. Staff are glad to be see the print journal collections being better used.

Harlow Healthcare Library said

‘Something that can be quite hard to quantify but is very important is that on the enquiries desk we can often get interrupted. Prior to PrintDOCs we would have had to think about which system we were searching and the one to search next. Now we have a central place we can just pick up easily where we left off and therefore process requests faster.’

Others asked for the system to be integrated with Koha so there's less duplication, especially when our catalogue and PrintDOCs run on the same system. This is being directly answered by the developments we’ve had made to the Koha ILL module.

Conclusion

Overall, PrintDOCs is having a major impact on NHS libraries in England. There are demonstrable savings in staff time from having only one catalogue to search to check on article availability from NHS print journal collections.

It has also saved money through services not having to use the paid for sources previously used to satisfy requests. These were used because of the complexity of searching up to 6 regional catalogues. Having one catalogue enables more articles to be found from within NHS print journal collections. This likely explains the rise in the number of articles being supplied via PrintDOCs being reported by some services.

There are also intangible benefits by reducing the mental load on staff at busy enquiry desks, who used to have to remember which catalogue they were searching before being interrupted by a customer and which ones remained to be searched.

PrintDOCs availability checking will be incorporated into the ILL module developments we’ve commissioned from Open Fifth. This has the potential to streamline the document supply workflow further and release more time to spend on delivering library services to other parts of the NHS.

The data upon which we’ve evaluated the quantitative impact of PrintDOCs is limited, so we will be revisiting the impact when the part 2 2024-25 annual statistical return data is available and when we have more regions using the new ILL module functionality in Koha.