TELETEX BASED ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DELIVERY (PROJECT HERMES)

Project HERMES, the proposed electronic document delivery service sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, is described. HERMES is characterized by the participation of major publishers, industrial and public libraries and national government and by the use of Teletex for both document ordering and delivery. For the first phase of the project, provision of three facilities—electronic document ordering and delivery, automatic document delivery and electronic mail—to a pilot group of some sixty organizations is proposed. The major aim of the project is to promote and gain experience of the use of Teletex within the information and publishing community. [The Department of Trade and Industry announced in December 1984 that it does not intend to proceed with Project HERMES. The Journal of Documentation Editorial Board nevertheless feels that Susan Amy's paper should be published on the grounds that the proposals it details remain one possible approach to the implementation of a demonstration document delivery service based on teletex.]