Still, LaserCat is somewhat static--it's updated quarterly, and has no
communications capability, so there's no way to tell if the book is actually
on the shelf, and requests to borrow have to be sent by alternate means.
The second alternative, having all Idaho libraries on the same computer system
flies in the face of the fact that this is IDAHO, and by gum, we'll make up
our own minds what we want to do locally (all academic libraries in Idaho run
systems from different vendors).
Most of the large Idaho libraries have their catalogs on the Internet, but to
use them, you have to adapt to different interfaces, which may be quite
different from your home system. Enter the International standard Z39.50, a
communications format for library systems. If library systems are Z39.50
compliant, theoretically you can search a "foreign" system using the search
engine of your home system, and have the results returned in a format you
recognize. That's the idea that you saw on the Libraries Linking Idaho page
(www.lili.org). In order to make this work, all library systems in Idaho
would need to be Z39.50 compliant--since most of the major companies are
building this into their systems, eventually most will be. The second thing
is that Z39.50 would need to work in practice, not just in theory. Some of
our preliminary experiments shows that the technology needs considerable
"tweaking", but we have hopes.
Version 2 of the UI's Web catalog (coming in the next couple of months) will
have a Z39.50 client that allows you to search up to seven catalogs
simultaneously. It'll be a good trial of the concept. Eventually, we hope to
see a system which would allow you to find a book anywhere in the state,
request it directly from your computer, and have it delivered by fast courier
with no further intervention by library staff. Faculty, staff, and students
at the UI can do this now for UI books. A statewide service should only take
just a little more work :-)
Gens Johnson wrote:
> What are the plans for Latah County library to hook into the big statewide
> electronic library catalog? I recently saw a list of libraries who were
> funded (?) to get the required software, and I didn't notice our dearly
> beloved (!)
>
> Gens
-- Ron Force rforce@belle.lib.uidaho.edu Dean of Library Services University of Idaho Moscow, ID 83844 (208) 885-6534