New all-Wales Find a Book software – it’s BETA!!!

The former all-Wales ‘Find a Book’ (a troubled system that caused ILL staff more than a few headaches, especially in its final dying months) has been replaced by a new software and was launched in BETA in December 2014. Find a Book searches FE, HE, NHS, public and specialist library catalogues in Wales (you can limit by sector) and enables users to order from any library using an online form. Needless to say, it’s early days, and, as with any software/systems switches, we can only thank IT gurus for conceiving the term ‘BETA’! Meanwhile.......

"National Library of Wales" by Ian Capper.

ILL staff members, front line staff and, undoubtedly, users, are, to quote a member of the North Wales Libraries Partnership ILL staff, ‘discovering the little foibles of the new system’ (whether the tone was ironic, irritated, droll or affectionate remains to be seen!); and the National Library of Wales and ExLibris teams are working tirelessly to eradicate the system’s ‘little foibles’. If you have a burning desire to check out the new software, click here and feel free to feed back to the team (if you do a simple search by title, you’re pretty much golden, but be forewarned, one of its little foibles lies with the advanced search – did I mention it’s in BETA?!).

But what does the new system mean for ILL? Back in the days before e-books and e-journals had fully pervaded libraries and hand-held tablets were mere twinkles in the eyes (and twitches to bank balances) of manufacturers, ILL within north Wales increased by 60% and increased hugely across Wales, with loans in some libraries/authorities rocketing by almost 400%. However, with library closures, opening hour reductions, self-issue machines and growing e-resource usage, it’s hard to predict what next for ILL. But one thing is for sure…when Find a Book's little foibles (this one is affectionate!) are eradicated and the software is running smoothly, Wales will be seeing increases in ILL once again. How much remains to be seen, but watch this space!  

                             

Images:
"National Library of Wales" by Ian Capper. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Library_of_Wales.jpg#mediaviewer/File:National_Library_of_Wales.jpg