Individually tailored tables of contents via BM‐SwetScan on the Boehringer Mannheim network Available to Purchase

For some months the central library of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, a research‐based pharmaceutical company in Germany, has been disseminating tables of contents in electronic form. These electronic tables of contents are generated from the current scientific journal literature. At present the library supplies contents pages of roughly 440 journals to 240 internal clients. This service has been designed as a means of rapid distribution of individually tailored information from the topical scientific literature. The tables of contents are delivered to the clients' electronic mailboxes via the electronic mail system. We describe the situation before the introduction of this service, the motives for switching to this service, and the librarian and technical work necessary in the preliminary stages. Moreover, the paper shows the realisation of the project, the problems occurring during the phase of introduction and the acceptance by the users.