Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040043
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library will put its circulation records and other services on-line with a state-of-the-art, public automated checkout system.
"We're trying to be a library of the future," said computer specialist Steve Helm. "The important thing is what can people do outside the library? The answer is they can do everything."
That means students, through in-school computers, or residents through home computers, can check on a book or receive other library services by using a modem to connect to the new system.
At the library's branches in Christiansburg, Blacksburg and Floyd, it means instead of relying on paper records and the old card catalog, library users will locate and check on books by using networked personal computers.
The library's computers also will have access to the Internet's World Wide Web, a fast-growing aggregation of thousands of "home pages," each one a way to reach more and more information. "It's superb," summed up Karen Dillon, library director. "It's very user-friendly. It's being installed in more and more libraries."
"Only 25 percent of patrons use the card catalogs today," Helm said. "If we can get beyond that and make it ... more useful, then it will be a success."
The Unicorn library automation system uses graphical images, rather than typed word commands, to aid a library user's search for information. It is designed to be used with a computer mouse, so a user may move a pointer to an on-screen image representing the type of information sought, click on it and go to the next step automatically.
Helm, the library's computer specialist, will be working this winter to fine-tune preparations for the installation of the Unicorn system, which was developed by the Sirsi Corp. of Huntsville, Ala. He expects the system to be ready for public use by March, when the library will hold a series of evening training sessions. Blacksburg's branch should have 12 to 14 terminals; Christiansburg should have 10 to 12; and Floyd should have four, Helm said.
Montgomery County chose Sirsi this summer after deciding its $196,185 proposal offered more features that six other competitors. The county is paying for the Unicorn system with $150,000 from the bond sale approved in 1993, $25,000 from the library budget, $12,000 from library fund raising and $9,200 from next year's state library grant.
In order to fully equip the three branches with sufficient personal computers, the county Library Board had relied on an additional $69,000 that staff working for the Board of Supervisors cut from the library's 1995-96 budget last spring without the board's explicit approval. At their Sept. 25 meeting, the supervisors unanimously restored that money to the library budget.
Part of those funds will purchase new computers and pay for the installation of the network, Dillon said.
In a related development, the library this month will launch its own public-access web server, a computer designed to give nonprofit community interest groups free space to set up home pages on the World Wide Web. The library is using a server, or base computer, given to it by Apple Computer Inc. through that company's "Library of Tomorrow" grant program.
"What we're doing is opening up the web space to any nonprofit group in the New River Valley," Helm said. The library will hold a meeting to explain the new service at 7 p.m. Oct. 25 in the community room at the Christiansburg branch, located at 125 Sheltman St.
by CNB