DOCLINE® 4.0: The Next Generation of Serial Holdings
On June 23, 2009, the U.S. National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) released DOCLINE 4.0. DOCLINE is the NLM automated interlibrary loan requesting system. The system provides nearly 3,000 health science libraries in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine® (NN/LM®), Canada, Mexico, and other selected international libraries, with the means to request the interlibrary loan of biomedical literature.
The new version contains a key enhancement of the Serial Holdings module requested by users. It also introduces simplified serials title searching, modified screen designs to improve the display and editing of serial holdings records, search filtering by acquisition status, and a new function called Show All My Holdings which allows authorized users to display a list of all of their library's holdings for efficient review and update.
DOCLINE 4.0 supports Internet Explorer 8, in addition to Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3. In keeping with the NLM policy to support only the latest two major versions of Internet Explorer, DOCLINE support for Internet Explorer 6 will end on August 31, 2009.
Show All My Holdings
DOCLINE 4.0 adds several major enhancements to the Serial Holdings functionality. The most significant addition is the new Show All My Holdings function (see Figure 1) which allows users with update rights to display a list of all of their library's serial holdings.
Libraries can focus on a subset of titles for review and editing by using the search filters. For example, users can use the Show All My Holdings feature to list all of their electronic journals (see Figure 2). In the past, libraries had to search title by title in order to update their holdings.
Searching and Editing Serial Holdings
In this version, NLM modified serial holdings search to be left-anchored. Thus, title searches will now automatically retrieve all bibliographic records for titles that start with the search term entered. For example, a search for "pain" will retrieve all serial titles that begin with "pain" including "Pain," "Pain and headache," "Pain clinic," etc. All limits on the number of serial titles and library holdings returned in the search results were eliminated, and new screen designs were introduced for the display of serial titles and serial holdings results (see Figure 3).
In addition, a search filter for acquisition status was added on the Additional Filters page so that users can limit their search to libraries with holdings that are "Currently received" or "Not currently received."
The revised Edit screen presents bibliographic and holdings information in a more streamlined view (see Figure 4). The Edit screen allows users to select the most commonly used holdings formats (see Figure 4, item 1) of Text (tu), Electronic Journal (cr), and Microform (hu). Less frequently entered formats can be selected from the "Other" drop-down list.
The new Edit screen also makes it easier to distinguish between permanently retained holdings or limited retention holdings (see Figure 4, item 2). For permanently retained holdings, the "Add New Range" button (see Figure 4, item 3) makes it easy to indicate gaps in holdings. Users can easily indicate how complete their holdings are and their library's commitment to retain the title (see Figure 4, item 4).
Acton D, Collins ME. DOCLINE® 4.0: The Next Generation of Serial Holdings. NLM Tech Bull. 2009 Jul-Aug;(369):e2.
