An Electronic Online Access Showroom for the New Acquisitions of the Library of the University of Macedonia

Abstract

An electronic online access showroom, which will be used to record and to announce the newly acquired books to the users of the library of the University of Macedonia (www.lib.uom.gr/english/index.html), is already running in pilot phase. The online showroom includes a specially designed digital “exhibition area”, which is accessible via the World Wide Web and which is periodically updated with the new book acquisitions of the Library. The users of the library can browse the book catalog of this exhibition area directly from the Web with an ordinary Internet Browser. The catalog can be sorted by date, author, or title, according to the user’s preference. Also, instead of browsing the book catalog, the users can execute a search on the stored records, by keyword, title, author, subject, ISBN, or publisher, in order to limit their search to the subset of records that mostly interest them. Furthermore, from the central book catalog, or from their “search‐results” list, the users can retrieve more information concerning a specific book, simply by doing a mouse‐click on the book title. The returned information includes the table of contents, the cover and the backside of the book, the classification number, the ISBN, the title and subtitle, up to two subject headings relevant to its content, the author name(s), the publisher and the year of publication. Additionally, if they wish, they can make a reservation for one or more books, by filling in a simple form, with their full name, their e‐mail address and their user code number (a number which is provided to them on their registration with the library), in order to be notified as soon as the book(s) become available. This electronic browsing system is available in two languages, Greek and English. The user is able to change the language preference from any screen at anytime. In addition, the online showroom comes with a separate online database management environment, which is also accessible via the Web but only by authorized users. This environment allows the management of the book records and of the authorized user accounts, including the insertion, deletion and editing of the records and users. This is a paper that was presented at the 12th Annual Panhellenic Academic Libraries Conference, 12‐14 November 2003 at the Technological Educational Institute in Seres, Greece. The full conference program is at: http://conference.teiser.gr/programma_en.html