tipsandtricks.htm [OCLC]

No.2
ISSN: 1559-0011
2006

Add this feature to your catalog to give users a view of the local library landscape

By Tom Storey

Want to make materials at neighboring libraries available to your users at the click of a mouse? Try adding a “Check Nearby Libraries” feature to your online public access catalog. That’s what Santa Monica Public Library in California did.

Whenever materials from its main library or branches are checked out and unavailable, users can click on this exciting new feature, which sends the search to the OCLC Open WorldCat site using the ISBN and a zip code qualifier. The Find in a Library screen pops up showing the holdings of local libraries, and users can drill down into the online catalog for circulation status. The screen also has an information link for each library that connects to the library’s Web site so users can get hours and location.

“This feature seemed an ideal way to create an ad hoc consortium catalog with very little effort and no expense,” said Migell Acosta, Principal Librarian—Information Management.“We are surrounded by municipal and academic library systems whose borders touch and overlap. Our community is very mobile and often travels to different library systems in the course of their commute or recreational activity, so they are willing to visit other libraries to get materials.”

“Our staff and our patrons use it all the time to find different sources of fulfillment.”

Acosta said that the new functionality was not difficult to implement. For a library in control of its bibliographic records but not its ILS interface, it could simply create an 856 field in each record with the link in it, he says. It could probably create a macro in Connexion to automate the process.

In Acosta’s case, he altered the iBistro interface of the Siris/Dynix Unicorn system the library uses. It took only the addition of three lines of code to one file, he says.