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United States National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

Fact Sheet
Loansome Doc®
A Document Ordering Feature of PubMed® and the NLM Gateway

Loansome Doc enables PubMed and NLM Gateway users to order documents found in MEDLINE®. It is available to users in the U.S. and internationally. A user can order articles from a list of citations retrieved from PubMed and the NLM Gateway by sending requests to a library for the full-text documents.

How to Register:

  1. Identify an "Ordering Library"

    1. Loansome Doc Users in the U.S.

      Before an order can be placed, and before a user can fill out the registration page, all Loansome Doc users must first establish an agreement with a medical library or libraries that use DOCLINE® (NLM's automated interlibrary loan request and referral system). That library is referred to as the user's "Ordering Library." Health professionals in the U.S. who are currently affiliated with a medical library should contact that library first. Unaffiliated health professionals, or users who are unsure about which library to contact, may obtain assistance from the Regional Medical Library (RML) in their area by calling 1-800-338-RMLS (7657), Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM in all time zones.

    2. Loansome Doc Users Outside of the United States

      International users must identify an "Ordering Library" before filling out the registration page. To find an Ordering Library, contact a medical library in your country, or the one nearest your area. The library must be on NLM's DOCLINE system. There are many international health libraries that provide document delivery to users in their countries and within their area of the world, and many of them are on DOCLINE. Some U.S. health libraries also serve international users, as does CISTI, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information. Once you have established a service agreement, the library will give you the ordering library ID (LIBID) that Loansome Doc uses to send your requests to that library. After you have the LIBID, you may proceed to fill in the registration page.

  2. Register using the Loansome Doc Registration Page

    The Loansome Doc Registration page stores the user's complete name, address, telephone number, fax number, preferred method of delivery (Mail, Fax, Pickup, Email, or Web), and the library identifier(s) for the library or libraries that will provide documents. Your email address may be either an IP address or a personal/institutional email address. To find the Registration page from PubMed, select "Order Documents" from the left side of the screen, or from the NLM Gateway, select "Ordering Info" from the left side of the screen.

Loansome Doc Ordering

Outlined below are the steps involved in a Loansome Doc request starting with a PubMed search and ending with delivery of a copy of the requested document.

  1. Perform a literature search using PubMed.
  2. Click the check box to the left of the articles you want to order.
  3. From PubMed select "Order" from the Send to menu, and click the Send to button, or temporarily save your selections to the Clipboard by clicking "Add to Clipboard" on the PubMed features bar.
  4. Enter your UserID and Password.
  5. Select "Order Documents" from the drop-down selection box. Click Go.
  6. Review orders and delivery information.
  7. Click Send Order button.
  8. The NLM computer electronically transfers the orders from the Loansome Doc Order File to the user's Ordering Library using DOCLINE.
  9. Staff at the Ordering Library are notified of pending Loansome Doc requests when they log on to DOCLINE. The requests are printed, processed, and updated as filled or not filled.

Ordering documents via the NLM Gateway

  1. Perform a search using the NLM Gateway.
  2. Select the desired citations by clicking the check box to the left of each citation.
  3. When you have finished marking your selections, click on the "Order Documents" button, or save your selections to the Locker by clicking "Put in Locker" on the Gateway Results page.
  4. A Document Ordering page will be displayed. Review your choices and select the "Order Documents" button.
  5. The Loansome Doc Ordering page will open in a separate browser window. Enter your UserID and password.
  6. Select "Order Documents" from the drop-down selection box. Click Go.
  7. Review orders and delivery information.
  8. Click Send Order button.
  9. The NLM computer electronically transfers the orders from the Loansome Doc Order File to the user's Ordering Library using DOCLINE.
  10. Staff at the Ordering Library are notified of pending Loansome Doc requests when they log on to DOCLINE. The requests are printed, processed, and updated as filled or not filled.

Requesting a Status Report

PubMed or NLM Gateway users may request the status of Loansome Doc orders almost immediately after an order is sent. The Status Report consists of the request number, request date, the status of the order, status date, the full journal title, author(s), title of the article, a complete citation, and the PMID (PubMed ID number).

To check the status of an order, select "Status of Orders" from the drop down box on the User Login page after you have entered your UserId and Password.

There are ten possible Loansome Doc order status phrases:
1) Order not yet read by library
2) In process - order received by library
3) Filled by library
4) Not filled by library
5) In process - order forwarded to another library
6) Order forwarded to another library, filled and sent to patron
7) Order forwarded to another library, filled and sent to your library
8) Order forwarded to another library, but could not be filled
9) Order forwarded to another library, then canceled
10) Expired due to non-action by your library.

Costs

Users will not incur charges to transmit a batch of requests to a library through PubMed and the NLM Gateway. Charges for copies of articles or other services will vary from library to library.

Questions

Email questions about Loansome Doc Service to: custserv@nlm.nih.gov

A complete list of NLM Factsheets is available at:
(alphabetical list)http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsheets.html
(subject list)http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

Or write to:

FACT SHEETS
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894

Phone: (301) 496-6308
Fax: (301) 496-4450
email: publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov

Last updated: 29 January 2004
First published: 10 September 2002
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content