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By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
12-18-2008 The Inyo County Free Library is about to step into the “world of tomorrow” with the unveiling of its online catalog. After nearly a decade of sweat and tears and paper cuts, the library is proud to announce that the system’s book catalog will be available for electronic perusal tomorrow via its Web site.
Libraries throughout the county that, collectively, comprise the Inyo County Free Library, will still have the faithful card catalogs but also a designated computer so searches for titles can be done online.
The Inyo County Free Library has made more than 40,000 titles accessible through www.inyocounty.us/library and the list is still growing, according to Nancy Masters, the county’s library director.
“We continue to build the database daily,” Masters explained Tuesday, “It’s an arduous process, but we need to be accurate.”
The electronic conversion process consists of a lot more than just tagging each individual book with a barcode and filing the title into the database.
First came the daunting task of taking inventory of every library book in the state’s second largest county. After that labor-intensive process, the electronic filing’s details must be matched with the hard copy details. These are the details that define where books will be cataloged, beyond simple title and author. Books are further divided by subject field and sub-fields.
Masters said that the library is ready to go online with the titles it has, as these were converted starting in 2006. Well, the conversion began in 1999, and after “several efforts” the library was able to “pull it all together in 2006,” Masters explained. These titles have been through the editing process of making sure all the details match up between the hard copy and the electronic version.
Currently, trained volunteers and staff are converting and editing titles.
The online catalog will also have a “shelf list” function, so browsers can see what other titles are on the same shelf as the one they’re looking for, bringing a virtual reality component to a book search.
The online catalog will have something else the cards didn’t have – the name of the branch where the book or title is located. The card catalog at many Inyo County libraries would have a title on file, even though that title may not actually be at that particular branch. For example, a title found in the card catalog of the Big Pine branch might physically be at the library in Lone Pine.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that every branch had the entire catalog of the county’s system, but by having every title from every branch available for search and inter-branch loans, patrons will now know what is available, and where.
Masters said this will be of great advantage to those in the county who “sometimes we forget about” – the folks in the southeast corner of Inyo, the residents of the Tecopa and Death Valley areas.
She said this will allow these residents to know what is available to them on county library book shelves hundreds of miles away.
Inyo County’s online catalog will join Riverside County’s Inland Library Catalog to be one of more than 60 contributing libraries. Inyo library patrons have always had the opportunity for inter-library loans with other state libraries, but now they will have access to the titles of the Inland catalog, making the Web site a sort of one-stop shop.
The Inyo County Free Library, centrally located in the courthouse in Independence since 1923, is actually six branches that share books and work together from Bishop, Big Pine, Lone Pine, Tecopa, Furnace Creek and Independence.
Masters explained that the branches work together to “maximize scarce dollars to provide patrons with as many titles as possible.”
And the number of titles is growing for Inyo. Masters said that the library was able to secure $20,000 for young readers and children’s books with help from the Inyo First 5 Program for the Lone Pine and Big Pine branches. These two branches also received Spanish language fiction and non-fiction books by way of a Global Languages grant.
The Lone Pine branch is also hoping to expand its size by moving into the old sheriff’s substation. To help with the move, it is kicking off a fundraising effort with “A Very Special Christmas Concert” featuring the musical stylings of Bobby and Victor at the Mt. Whitney restaurant, Friday, Dec. 19 from 8-9:30 p.m. For more information or to make reservations, call 876-5461, 876-5751 or 793-3851.
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