In today’s world, people expect information to be available with the tap of a finger. When questions arise, they turn to their smartphones, tablets and other devices for instantaneous answers. Many think to search the web before searching their local library’s catalog. Search engines such as Google help people globally with daily tasks. Yet until recently, there was no way to find library material without first going to the catalog; this is changing.
Member libraries of the Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS) and the Mohawk Valley Library System (MVLS) are participants in the Zepheira Experimenter Program, and have joined their Libhub Initiative. The first step in this program was to reformat up to 1,000,000 member library records to Bibframe—a web-friendly vocabulary for describing library resources utilizing linked data principles.
These records are now part of the collaborative Library.Link Catalog, which has turned the data into web pages that can be indexed and then easily found through Google searches. This indexing process is still progressing, so not all data is available yet. However, users can already find links to our catalog at the top of some web searches.
Library offerings will rise to the top of direct Internet searches. Adding either “Mohawk Valley” or “Southern ADK” to a web search — let’s use “Downton Abbey Season 6” as an example — will bring you to the Link.sals.edu site, and then redirect you straight to the cataloged holdings of that item. If you search “Battle of Saratoga Southern ADK,” library collections will appear on the first page, enabling you to quickly find the item in the catalog through a single Google search. Numerous other items have already been indexed; we encourage you to explore this new option.
At the library, we often hear sentences that begin, “I didn’t know the library had…” By making our data accessible to search engines we hope that new, existing, and potential patrons will discover that there is far more available at their library than they realized.
This endeavor is supported by funds allocated by New York State Senator Farley to both library systems; the program will run through June 30, 2016.
About the Southern Adirondack Library System
The Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS) is a voluntary association of 34 public libraries in Hamilton, Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. SALS is one of 23 public library systems in New York State; its mission is to help member libraries meet community needs. http://www.sals.edu
About the Mohawk Valley Library System
The Mohawk Valley Library System (MVLS) is a co-operative library system supporting public libraries in Fulton, Montgomery, Schenectady, and Schoharie Counties. http://www.mvls.info
About Zepheira
Zepheira was founded in 2007 and has extensive experience creating products and solutions focused on the modernization of library information systems. Zepheira’s founders and staff have played key roles in pioneering the next generation of the Web, including the semantic technology underlying most Web applications. http://www.zepheira.com