NebrasKard
Planning Underway
The State Advisory Council on Libraries recommended action on the NebrasKard reciprocal library borrowing agreement at its March 2000 meeting in Kearney. The Council urged efforts toward implementation of the NebrasKard, which has been under discussion for the past few years. As previously proposed, the NebrasKard would be a voluntary reciprocal borrowing agreement that would permit registered borrowers of participating libraries to borrow materials from other libraries. Nebraska's postsecondary libraries introduced a reciprocal borrowing agreement several years ago.
In response to the State Advisory Council on Libraries action, a meeting was convened in April 2000 at the Library Commission to discuss the NebrasKard proposal. The discussion weighed the advantages and disadvantages of a reciprocal borrowing program. An ad hoc committee was formed to address NebrasKard policy and procedural details. The committee included Becky Baker, Seward Public Library Director; Cecelia Lawrence, North Platte Public Library Director; Mary Nash, then Nebraska Library Association President; Ted Smith, Norfolk Public Library Director; and Dee Yost, then Republican Valley Library System Administrator. The committee met in June in Hastings. Working from materials from other states, the committee agreed to adapt provisions of the Colorado program for use in Nebraska. The committee's proposed NebrasKard policies and procedures are available for public review and comment, along with a report presented at the Nebraska Library Commission's July meeting. Additional materials are posted on the Library Commission home page at nlc.nebraska.gov, search on NebrasKard. For more information contact Rod Wagner, 402-471-4001, 800-307-2665, e-mail: Rod Wagner.
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New FirstSearch Released
OCLC's FirstSearch has a new look. FirstSearch 5.0 was released in FY 2000, with many new features. New features in the administrative module include:
 Access via Web browser rather than telnet
Turn on/off full-text by database
Limit access to full-text by choosing databases that require a password
Turn on/off ILL by database
Customize ILL form
Set default operators and/or search interface
Control number of cross-database searching to 1, 2, or 3 databases
Customize topic areas
Add library logo to FirstSearch screens
New features in the search interface include:
Expert searching (of interest to former EPIC users)
Full right truncation and wildcard options
Subject thesauri for the WorldCat, ERIC, PsycINFO/PsycFirst, and MEDLINE databases
Limiting searches to an individual library
Limiting searches to a group of libraries
Sorting search results
Ranking relevance
Viewing, marking, and e-mailing up to 100 records at a time
Searching one-to-three databases at a time
Linking to detailed serial holdings
Searching history for entire session
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FirstSearch provides access to eighty-six databases representing a variety of subjects and including some full-text databases. More than 680 Nebraska libraries subscribe at no charge to the Nebraska package of twelve databases, financed by the Library Commission with state tax funds. For more information about these databases or to access FirstSearch 5.0 see the Commission home page at nlc.nebraska.gov, click on Electronic Databases.
Resource Sharing Facilitated
There are a variety of reasons for creating a shared library catalog. The first to come to mind is facilitating resource sharing. Resource sharing is cost-effective, allowing for greater use of material across the state; and efficient, allowing for librarians and library customers to search across the collections of libraries across the state.
The Library Commission facilitates this through our statewide union catalog within FirstSearch's WorldCat. Through our statewide FirstSearch contract, this catalog is available (at no charge to the library) to all libraries regardless of type and to all Nebraskans through remote patron access outside the library. When a librarian or library user searches WorldCat for material, if a Nebraska library owns that material, that library's or those libraries' symbols are first to appear.
Now, more than one hundred Nebraska libraries are adding their holdings to the statewide union catalog. Forty-three of these are using CatExpress, a Web-based product allowing small libraries to add their holdings and to download MARC records for their local catalogs. For more information about CatExpress, contact Christa Burns at 402-471-3107, 800-307-2665, e-mail: Christa Burns.
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Year in Review
