Technically Speaking

By David Dorman
American Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org

Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois.

Column for May 2001

Boston Goes for Clarity

These days even library signage is going high tech. The Boston Public Library is a case in point, having contracted with Digital Multimedia Solutions of Boston to install three digital display units. The maker, Clarity Visual Systems of Wilsonville, Oregon, sells 40-inch plasma display screens, 38–67-inch LCD rear-projection devices, and display-control software. The SignSuite software can assemble still images, animations, text, and movies into an integrated show. It also provides a tool that allows businesses to generate and display schedules of events and media files throughout the day and week. Further, it can enable the customer to have real-time control over the displays via a networked console, for those times when a prerecorded set of images isn’t current enough.

BPL purchased three 38-inch display units for the downtown main branch with funds raised by the City-Wide Friends of the Boston Public Library. The displays are mounted edge-to-edge in banner style on the library’s mezzanine walkway fascia, which is about 20 feet high in the main entrance lobby.

“As soon as they walk in, our customers see a very visually appealing display of all the programs going on in the library, and we have the system preprogrammed to display in many different languages,” said P. A. d’Arbeloff, BPL communications officer. “This is part of our continuing effort to provide the best customer service we can.” BPL branches may be in store for the signage soon. For more information about Clarity Visual Systems signage, visit www.clarityvisual.com.

MARC’s Getting Fatter

Syndetic Solutions is gradually becoming a major supplier of enhanced bibliographic content to libraries. Sirsi has announced that Syndetics will provide customers of Sirsi’s iBistro e-library with 140,000 book-cover images and 140,000 annotations of academic titles, as well as 10,000 book excerpts or first chapters up to 20 pages in length. Syndetics now supplies these customers with 60,000 tables of contents, 300,000 book summaries, and 30,000 author notes. It also has agreements with OCLC, Marcive, and Brodart. Innovative is developing a link to the Syndetics content as well. Agreements are in the works with DRA, Epixtech, and others.

Earlier in the year Syndetics started selling directly to libraries, which can put the enhanced data into their MARC records or put URLs in the records to link to the data. Costs to public libraries for current subscriptions to Syndetics data are based on the type of data accessed and on the library’s annual circulation.

Annual subscriptions for the full range of Syndetics content can range from about $900 for small libraries to $30,000 for very large institutions. The price to academic libraries for the same content is about $1 per FTE user. For more information, visit www.syndetics.com.

Contracts and Agreements

• Sirsi—with the Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the iBistro Electronic Library and the Unicorn Library Management System, to replace the library’s CARL system.
• Innovative Interfaces—with the Cooperating Libraries in Consortium, a federation of eight academic libraries in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a Millennium library automation system to replace the consortium’s Dynix system.
• The Library Corporation—with the Wellington City Libraries in Wellington, New Zealand, for the CARL library automation system to be installed in the Central Library and 11 branches.
• Endeavor Information Systems—with Ithaca (N.Y.) College, for the Voyager integrated library management system, to replace the library’s DRA system.

Acquisitions and Alliances

• Swets Blackwell and IBM have agreed to develop and build a portfolio of Web-based information management products and services that will enable corporate clients and end-users to purchase and manage their subscriptions online.
• NetLibrary and Blackwell’s Book Services have announced that users of Blackwell’s Collection Manager—the Web-based collection-development and acquisitions service it provides free to customers—can now buy NetLibrary books through BBS’s Collection Manager.
• ISI and CAPI Publishing, a multinational UK-based nonprofit corporation dedicated to supporting research in the applied life sciences, have announced that ISI will add the CAB Abstracts content to its Web of Science service. CAB Abstracts is an applied life science database with more than 3.5 million records covering journal articles, books, and conference proceedings.