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New Online Catalog To Bring Advanced Features to Your Desktop

About ten years ago, Walther Library, together with twenty-two other libraries of the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI), started working together to bring up its current library system, a DRA Classic system. By next fall, students will see a new catalog as Walther Library, together with other PALNI libraries, moves to a new system, the Ex Libris Aleph 500 system.

The online catalog is only \"the tip of the iceberg\"; all of us in the library will notice the difference. Aleph is an integrated library system (as is our current DRA Classic)—all the functions that we use behind the scenes are a part of the system, as well as the online catalog. Walther Library staff will use the new system for cataloging, serials, inter-library loan, acquisitions, circulation, and reporting. Students will notice most of the difference initially in the online catalog.

Access to our new system will be in the same manner as you use now: through a Web browser from any computer with an Internet connection. Although the look of the screen will be different, you will still be able to search for items in our collection and tell whether or not we have books (or other items) of interest.

What will be different is the added functionality of the system (\"functionality\" is computer-speak for \"what you are able to do\"). Although we are not able to say right now all that you may do with the new system (as opposed to what you can do), the possibilities include the following: ability to see when an item is due back if it is checked out, greatly increased searching capabilities, and user-initiated inter-library loan. If you want to see some of the possibilities, you can use the catalog of the University of Notre Dame at:

Not only will you be able to search the catalog more easily, finding out more information, but you will also be able to access most of the information that Walther Library currently makes available through various Web pages. Two additional tools from Ex Libris, MetaLib and SFX, will enable us to link our electronic reserves, full-text articles from ATLAS, and other electronic journals (to name a few) to the on-line catalog. This will let you move effortlessly between all the resources we have made available for you that are accessible from a computer.

All this linking of various resources is a bit in the future, though (not far in the future, but not this fall, either). First we have to implement and move all our existing data from DRA Classic to Ex Libris Aleph. There is much learning and understanding that the staff must do in the process. If we are able to hold to our schedule, we will be making the change-over to the new system in August, which will have the least impact on students. This will also give the library staff a full month to work through any problems that haven’t been foreseen, and prepare the system for full use beginning with the school year in September.

The manufacturer, Ex Libris, had its beginnings in 1980, when the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, was in need of an automated library system. To fulfill this need, a group of librarians joined up with analysts and programmers and proceeded to develop the first generation of ALEPH, the Automated Library Expandable Program. PALNI will be using ALEPH 500, the fifth generation of the system.

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