60-day returns • free shipping on USA orders $129+
Annoyed with my library online system
- This topic has 12 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 4 months ago by
.
Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
- Posts
I am rather frustrated with my libraries online system. Sometimes I find a book by searching by key word, somtimes title, and sometimes author. Some of them won’t show up under keyword or title, but when I look up the author, there it is. I don’t have time to look for it in every possible way. I just need to be able to look and find it!! Very frustrating!! I am trying to make a list of everything that I can get from the library for our American History study and as we come to the different units I’ll check everything out and then choose what to read, but it is frustrating not being able to quickly look and find. Or thinking that I might be missing lots of good books just because I didn’t do the right search for that book. Sorry for the vent. Sometimes I wish I just had the money to buy all I wanted and then keep them on my shelf. This is the first year I will rely so heavily on the library and I am finding the process very tedious and I haven’t even gotten to the point of checking out what we need when we need it.
Try searching with the ISBN number. It’s likely to give the results you want. Unsure of the ISBN number? Check Amazon.
If your library’s system is done by SirsiDynix Horizon, there isn’t much your library can do. The search just is bad. (There IS a worse one—if anyone belongs to a small library that uses a company called WILBOR the searches are SO BAD. I counted one time–I searched 20 totally different titles, and every time Alice in Wonderland came up in the top 5 returned results. ?????) There are only a few companies providing services, and only a few really huge library systems design their own. There isn’t enough competition in the market to really drive good results. Sorry. Your librarian likely has access to a better search capacity. If they do use Horizon, then really, author last name will give you the most consistency. At least it’s not Boolean like our research-periodical service. Do you know how many people in a small economically depressed town understand Boolean searches? In my town, my guess is about 7. LOL
Pangit: I have about the opposite problem! I can search and find books I want by title and key word. If I search by author, though– I get a big fat NOTHING! So annoying! Especially when I was searching for what books the library had that were a series by the same author!
I empathize! And confess that I buy too many used books in order to not have this problem! *L*
I am not sure what system our library uses. I tried the ISBN and the couple I tried it worked for. But, to do that I have to look each book up on Amazon and then the library. I’m still looking it up twice. Our libraries are county libraries and sometimes have more than one library in the system. A year ago our county library system joined another two counties (who had already been joined). I think some of the problem is from that. Sometimes a book will be listed in separate listings for different libraries instead of just showing the list of where that book is. One book I couldn’t find under “juvenile” but when I told it to search the whole system, there it was! I wish I could take them my list and let them find a categorize it all for me. =) Wouldn’t that be nice! But, I don’t think they’d like me handing over my TQ manual and printed lists.
This is one reason why I don’t use the library often, thought I really want to. I end up spending hours looking (or it feels like hours) and putting things on hold and then the books are not available when we want to read them. Inner library loans are only good for 3-5 days, and our local library does not have the best selection. Sadly people seem to just walk off with books and not even care about returning them. The library no longer fine for late books (except inner library loans, those have hefty fins of $5/day over due).
Well, if you are combining systems, then you have stuff catalogued by other people and in different systems, most likely. IF you ask the IT person at your system they may be able to give you search tips, but really, a truly good book is worth typing in a time or two. When I go searching for a TQ book, I search at my library, my interlibrary loan system, paperbackswap, half.com, fetchbook, WILBOR, etc. 🙂
I also have many of these problems, also when I finally find something and then 3 days later it kicks me a response that says something like – we can not ship your item for . . . . (like 1 of 10 reasons). I also, have a love hate relationship with ILL.
I’m sorry you’re not close to me. I would hand pick them all for you and if I didn’t have it already, I would buy it.
Robin – I have wished many times that I lived near you. =) It would be a long drive from the northwest! When I read your posts about your library it makes me long to have one near me. I wish I had the space and money to just have my own!
The combining of libraries has been a blessing. We live in a small rural town and are the only library for our county. It has helped to give us a larger choice of books and they are delivered right to our town. Most of the books I want to use come from the larger county. But, it has its challenges, too. Like the combining of catalogs and multiple people working on the catalog.
It is worth searching for a good book. But I’ve spent most of the last couple days searching the library, paperbackswap, amazon, bookfinder.com, SCM bookfinder, and this forum. I am still not done going through the TQ guide. History isn’t my strong area and so I don’t an idea what I want to use already and most of the books listed are new to me, so I don’t know what to pick. So, I search for them all and as I check them out I will pick which to read and which ones to leave in a basket for the kids to look at/read as they want to.
OK. I have an “It will make you feel better” moment. When I got my first TQ guide— I felt the same way as you, that I didn’t know what books to pick. AND . . . my library was not even online at the time. At all. So to check the computer, I had to GO to the library, leaving my 3 little kids with someone, and STAND at the catalog terminal, and enter in every book, and check it two or three ways (since search was still imperfect) and do it THAT way. You are blessed. LOL Oh, and we only had ONE catalog terminal, and if anyone else in the entire library wanted it, they had to wait for me to be done, or I had to let them use it and then go back to work. 🙂
Is your library listed in the WorldCat database? They have a nice search feature that you might be able to use instead, then link over to your library’s website once you find what you’re looking for. (And our CM Bookfinder has a “Find at your Library” button on every resource that will automatically search WorldCat for you.
)
)Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
- The topic ‘Annoyed with my library online system’ is closed to new replies.