ABSTRACT
The ADONIS project is a trial document delivery service which supplies full-text, laser-printed copies of articles appearing in 219 current biomedical journals which are stored on CD-ROM. The ADONIS project was formally conceived in 1980 after Elsevier Science Publishers and the then British Library Lending Division (BLLD) undertook a major survey to determine what articles were being requested and in what volume. All of the requests received at the BLLD during a two-week period were analyzed. It was determined that biomedical articles, less than 3-1/2 years old, were most frequently requested. Approximately 50% of the articles demanded appeared in issues less than 3-1/2 years old, and approximately 60% were from biomedical titles. Two subsequent document delivery surveys have since confirmed these results. (It is interesting to note that the original survey was one of the earliest examples of commercial and non-commercial organizations undertaking joint research in the area of scientific communication.)
