Sort of an odd article in the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog...sounds like it could have been written 30 years ago. Maybe I'm missing something?
The article discusses a "new system" which librarians are supposedly calling "the first of its kind". With this "new" system patrons can "request items directly from online catalogs". Librarians "can also better monitor statistics thanks to histories that track patrons and items and generate analyses."
Here's a sample paragraph:
"Before, Mr. Miller said, users who wanted to request an item from any of the university’s collections had to first register with a paper form and then request each item -- even those in the same collection -- with additional paper forms. For his library, the system has saved time by streamlining that process in a database, which allows librarians to process requests faster and eliminates the need for paper records, which take up 'enormous time and space.'"
Full text of article at:
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Online-Request-Software/7635/
Bernie Sloan
Received on Tue Aug 11 2009 - 10:02:57 EDT