BookWhere at Houston Public Library, BC
Our Evergreen system allows us to search Outlook Online, which is a consortium of public, academic, and institutional libraries in British Columbia; and we can search Amicus, the database of the National Library of Canada.
With BookWhere, we can search these databases and more than 2700 others, so I’m finding so many more of the titles I need with BookWhere. And it’s really fun to use. I’m actually disappointed if I don’t have any new titles to find.
I use the batch search feature to find most of the titles that I need, and while the search is in progress, I can do something else, so I’m not wasting any time. I just scan the barcodes on the backs of the books, and let BookWhere do the rest. When I come back to check the results, I let BookWhere’s ranking and scoring help me pick the best records from the resulting display, and send these records directly to my Evergreen system to add holdings information.
My old way of cataloguing took six to nine weeks by the time we submitted the list of desired titles, received the electronic records, and then finally got the actual items. BookWhere lets me get those new titles out almost right away.
I expect to recoup my purchase price within the first year because I’m going to be able to stop ordering MARC records from my vendors (they’re free in BookWhere!), and I expect to save most of that $900 with volunteers doing the book jackets and other processing. I may have to spend an extra $200 in processing supplies, but that still makes my BookWhere purchase a good deal.
BookWhere is awesome. I don’t even have to think about it. It is so cool and way easier even than going through Evergreen. And the help within BookWhere really is helpful and easy to follow.
With BookWhere, we can search these databases and more than 2700 others, so I’m finding so many more of the titles I need with BookWhere. And it’s really fun to use. I’m actually disappointed if I don’t have any new titles to find.
I use the batch search feature to find most of the titles that I need, and while the search is in progress, I can do something else, so I’m not wasting any time. I just scan the barcodes on the backs of the books, and let BookWhere do the rest. When I come back to check the results, I let BookWhere’s ranking and scoring help me pick the best records from the resulting display, and send these records directly to my Evergreen system to add holdings information.
My old way of cataloguing took six to nine weeks by the time we submitted the list of desired titles, received the electronic records, and then finally got the actual items. BookWhere lets me get those new titles out almost right away.
I expect to recoup my purchase price within the first year because I’m going to be able to stop ordering MARC records from my vendors (they’re free in BookWhere!), and I expect to save most of that $900 with volunteers doing the book jackets and other processing. I may have to spend an extra $200 in processing supplies, but that still makes my BookWhere purchase a good deal.
BookWhere is awesome. I don’t even have to think about it. It is so cool and way easier even than going through Evergreen. And the help within BookWhere really is helpful and easy to follow.
