Re: Univ. of MD Leadership Institute
Amy Terlaga (aterlaga@www.biblio.org)
Thu, 14 Aug 1997 09:36:20 -0400
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 09:36:20 -0400
Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19970814134509.0084be54@www.biblio.org>
From: Amy Terlaga <aterlaga@www.biblio.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <conntech>
Subject: Re: Univ. of MD Leadership Institute
At 05:52 PM 8/13/97 -0400, Ed Murray wrote:
>-Amy, you'll enjoy corresponding with Tamas. He's got a good sense of humor
>and enjoys a reputation for being mega-bright and good at what he does.
Have already heard from him. Unfortunately, he couldn't get into much
detail via email (although I may take another, more pointed stab at it in a
reply). However, he did offer to converse by phone. I'll probably stick to
email, though. I think better this way. ;-)
>Tamas would like to start selling the db that now drives
>http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/vcat.html (I think that's a test site and the
>product is only at Baltimore County at this point.) He asked about the CT
>market and asked me to pass on the availability of his software. As a
>member of the Joint Project Review Group I found it ironic to watch him
>simultaneously search CARL, Dynix, and LC websites during that presentation.
>(This was before we spoke!)
Yes, I've already checked it out. I liked what I saw. They're using frames
to display search results from the individual sites. This way you can go to
the original source itself to easily conduct more searches if you liked the
search results brought back from there. They also made it easy to get back
to the combined set of search results so that you wouldn't lose your way by
clicking one too many times. (No real need to lead a trail of bread crumbs
if you know what I mean.) Innovative Interfaces was offering this same
approach with their embedding of URLs in their MARC records. Once you click
on the new URL, this frame interface is applied so that you can easily get
back to their WebPAC.
>-Jim, here's some meat. Rivkah Sass' program "Online Guerrillla Marketing
>for Libraries" (with her apology to Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla
>Marketing Online) had the most application to me and New London. I flew
>home from Dulles knowing that I need to revive our website and add some
>suggested bells and whistles. They transcend placing and notification of
>holds by email, and email quick reference. She suggests push techniques to
>inform patrons of new titles at the library with email lists customized by
>reading preference, e.g. romance, mystery, history. Sites can include
>librarians' picks and links to book titles. Some bookseller sites feature a
>"Reader's who bought this book also bought..." link which we could easily
>imitate while maintaining reader confidentiality.
This would be a fresh approach, but I'm wondering just how labor-intensive
this last suggestion would be. "Readers who bought this book also bought. .
." would translate to either "Patrons who requested this book also
requested. . ." or (the better parallel) "Readers who checked out this book
also checked out . . ." You'd have to use your circulation records for
this. I don't know about other automated circ systems but ours doesn't save
that kind of history. You'd have to keep a record of this yourself.
I liked the email lists specific to genres, though. This would be easier to
implement and maintain. The initial setup would be the most work,
gathering the email addresses of your avid romance, mystery, science
fiction, etc. readers. Then it's just a matter of creating distribution
lists and sending off the new titles to them as they came in.
Thanks for the expanded comments, Ed. You're off the hook now. ;-)
>------------------------------------------
>Ed Murray, Director
>New London Public Library
>63 Huntington St., New London, CT 06320
>Voice: (860)447-1411 Fax: (860)443-2083
>
>
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Amy Terlaga Libraries Sharing Computerized Services
Bibliomation, Inc
Stratford, CT
aterlaga@biblio.org