Libraries To Unveil New Catalog on Web

After years of preparation, Harvard libraries will unveil a new web-based catalog this summer that will provide users with a slew of new features—but will rid the system of telnet access.

The new catalog, which will be functional July 8, will enable users to modify previous searches, limit requests by library, view checkout records and search for titles using Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.

During a month-long process beginning in early June, the libraries will install the program that runs the new catalog system. They will halt the entering of books and serials into the library’s integrated electronic system—but users will still be able to access the Harvard OnLine Library Information System (HOLLIS).

Library staff said the shutdown will have relatively little impact on users since circulation is expected to close for only a couple of days when the actual switch-over takes place.

“We purposely planned the transition so that it will be during low-use time,” said Tracey D. Robinson, head of the office of information systems for the Harvard University Library.

The multi-million dollar project will bring HOLLIS users what library staff are calling “patron empowerment.”

Not only will students be able to search by location and use Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters (known as CJK for short) in their requests, they will also be able to renew items from multiple libraries at once, hold or recall books, view a list of all materials they have borrowed and check fines.

But some telnet devotees will be disappointed with the absence of the alternative access to the library catalogue on the site.

Robinson said telnet access to library catalogues is outdated and unnecessary.

“Basically none of the library systems today provide that,” she said.

The new system will be run by a program, called ALEPH 500, that will also provide new services to library staff. Robinson said the system has been built with more internal help and will allow staff to interact on a network, sending orders electronically to book vendors.

All the libraries have already begun training staff and making arrangements for the system shutdown, though each will be affected by the change in its own way.

Susan J. von Salis, archivist and information systems administrator of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, said her library has had to buy new computers and upgrade software to Windows 2000 to run the ALEPH software. The upgrade requires additional training for library staff since most of the staff were only familiar with Windows 98.

Salis said Schlesinger, which is open to the public, hopes to benefit from the new system’s ability to limit searches by library.

“For someone in the general public, they really do care if a book is in Schlesinger,” Salis said.

The Harvard-Yenching Library, which houses the University’s prime collection of East Asian books and documents, eagerly awaits the new system’s language capabilities.

“The HOLLIS system has more than 600,000 CJK records,” said Harvard-Yenching Librarian James K.M. Cheng. “It will be a tremendous help to faculty, students and scholars...to be able to search the new HOLLIS database with CJK vernacular characters.”

He said Harvard-Yenching staff have been actively designing and testing the system’s ability to handle searches with CJK characters.

Robinson said that in the future the libraries hope to implement Arabic, Cyrillic and other non-Roman scripts.

In the 1990s, Robinson said, Harvard University Library realized the old HOLLIS system would not fit well with the digital library environment of the future. She said the old HOLLIS system, fully automated in the 1980s, has not only been hard to maintain but also is not a “good player” in a networked world of personal computers.

Harvard libraries signed a contract with Ex-Libris, the company that makes ALEPH 500, in November 2000. Robinson said Harvard decided to purchase ALEPH 500 in part because the program had already been sold to libraries at other large research universities, including MIT.

Robinson, who worked on the installation of the original HOLLIS system, said this transition differs from that of the mid-1980s—a time when the libraries were gradually moving from a punch card or non-automated system to an automated one.

“The impact is much less because we are moving from one automated environment to another,” she said.

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu.