From: Dennis Dillon <dillon_at_mail.utexas.edu>
For almost two years librarians at the University of Texas at Austin have
place their orders using the online ordering service, OCLC Selection.
It has made our lives immensely easier in that all we had to do was pull up
a WorldCat or Books In Print record, add the bibliographers initials, fund
code, price and any notes, and press the enter key.
In our case the data is then downloaded into our Innovative Interface's
Innopac acquistions module for our normal tracking and ordering processes.
Our librarians have been able to order books while at their workstations,
during slow periods at the Reference Desk, while visiting a colleague or
faculty member, or when at home or at conference. The service also meant
that we were not restricted to any specific vendors holdings, a specific
language, or to a specific format.
It would be hard to overemphasize how much of a difference this has made in
the daily routines of our collection librarians. It has made us
immeasurably more efficient and saved all of our staff time, work, and
general grief. And no online service could be more inexpensive.
Recently we've heard through the grapevine that the longterm future of this
service is uncertain.
Is there any similar service which anyone could recommend as an alternative?
Information on OCLC Selection may be found at:
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/menu/selection.htm
Šand of course, at the OCLC Booth at Midwinter.
--Dennis Dillon
Head, Collections and Information Resources
The University of Texas at Austin
Received on Tue Jan 19 1999 - 09:23:16 EST