Document Delivery Design: Systems for Users, Not Users for Systems

Based around the Feasibility Study into a National Union Catalogue for the UK (UKNUC) and input into the investigation of the future of union catalogues in Denmark, this paper suggests some of the ‘background’ issues that need consideration in the design of document delivery systems. It is not intended to address the full range of issues in modern document delivery systems and does not, for example, discuss implementation of the ISO-ILL standard. Rather, it emphasises that care should be taken to ensure that software design does not override a consideration of user needs. Results are presented from the UKNUC survey of user requirements, comparisons between physical and virtual union catalogue architectures are made and the recently published report of the UK Research Support Libraries Group is cited as it impacts on these topics.