PCPL continues to make improvements

Saturday, June 28, 2014

By LAUREN BOUCHER Staff Writer

By LAUREN BOUCHER

Staff Writer

The Putnam County Public Library is continuing to make strides toward several changes, including changing e-book platforms, an updated website and more, the Library Board learned at its monthly meeting Wednesday.

Library Director Grier Carson came before the board to discuss the move from the library's current e-book system, Baker and Taylor, to Overdrive.

"It's a significantly superior platform for e-books," Carson said. "It's easier to integrate with other web tools for example, the website that we are building, it's going to be easier to insert it directly on there. It will integrate extremely well with our catalog."

Carson added that Overdrive is one of the nations leading e-book platforms and is also part of the Indiana Digital Library Consortium.

"They're actual catalog of e-books is a little bit better than most other platforms," Carson explained. "They also work with Adobe to make the e-book interface a little more fluid. They're more flexible."

Although the new e-book platform from Overdrive costs a bit more, $1,500, it provides a wider range of titles for library patrons, which makes it worthwhile, Carson said.

"The most important difference for PCPL patrons would be the ease of access," Carson said, referencing the issues the library patrons had in integrating the previous software across several platforms.

"You're going to see most of those (problems) go away. It's just a lot more intuitive."

The new Overdrive platform will make its public launch late summer or early fall after all staff has undergone extensive training in the system.

Carson also advised the board that Wyn Way Technologies is busy creating the library's new website. At this time, a shell site is up and viewable and content migration has already begun.

"The shell is up, it just doesn't have a lot of content yet," Carson said. "Sometime next week we should have all of our content in place except maybe one or two things. It's coming along, it's in really good shape."

Carson also informed the board that the Friends of the Library, along with several volunteers and staff, successfully moved all book sale items and furniture from the basement of the Carnegie building to a new permanent location at the bottom of the library main stairs.

"This move benefits both the FOL book sale itself and the library as a whole," Carson said. "The former having gained a significant degree of public exposure, while leaving the Carnegie basement free for ongoing library space transformation."

Carson also noted that the Youth Services department has moved a large portion of its collection to the Kiwanis Room, where it will be located during the renovation.

Although the Youth Services department is nearly empty in preparation for the renovation, Carson noted that there has been a slight delay in receiving bids. Therefore, the board may need to hold a special meeting in the coming weeks to decide on bids.

"The construction is going to get pushed back just a little bit. The original plan was July 7 (start of construction), it's probably going to be closer to the end of July, " Carson said. "It's not a major problem, just a minor hiccup."

As previously discussed, the local history and archives department has recently been having issues with climate control. However, after a further look at the budget it was determined that the library will hold off on the climate control project until next year.

"Some of the levels in there in terms of humidity and temperature in there are just not what we want to see in terms of archives," Carson said. "In the meantime, we've been putting some sort of Band-Aids in place, blocking UV light, using dehumidifiers and fans and monitoring the temperature on a daily basis to make sure we're okay. This is something we're just going to have to bite the bullet on and fix next year."