May 21, 1996 - 5:00pm
A Nanaimo initiative to reduce costs and improve the quality of library service in the region through the sharing of services and other innovations, has born fruit, courtesy of Malaspina University-College library.
Under an agreement reached in April, the Malaspina library will provide electronic access to the Canadian Business and Current Affairs database to School District #68 and the Vancouver Island Regional Library (VIRL), which services Nanaimo and the island outside of Greater Victoria.
VIRL and the school district will be able to access the service from Malaspina for far less than the cost of purchasing the information themselves.
The full text of over 100 Canadian magazines and periodicals will be available on-line, as well as indexes to eight major newspapers and 500 additional magazines dealing with business, social issues, leisure, literature, the arts, medicine and consumer concerns.
Malaspina University-College will house the database on its computer, and the public library and school district will access the information through the Internet.
For VIRL, the new arrangement will replace their CD ROM version of the service and regional library staff anticipate providing answers faster to the more than 370,000 reference questions theyÕre asked annually.
Readers can choose from such well-known publications as MacleanÕs, Financial Post, Western Report (Alberta Report) and Chatelaine. Special interest publications range widely, everything from Canadian Underwriter to Canadian Fiction Magazine and Pulp and Paper Canada. More scholarly publications include: Canadian Journal of Sociology, Essays on Canadian Writing and Scholarly Publishing.
Up to date information is available from major newspapers including The Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, Financial Post, Montreal Gazette, The Toronto Star, Winnipeg Free Press and Vancouver Sun.
Catherine Whiteley, director of library services for Malaspina University-College, said the opportunity to make the material available to other service providers comes directly out of a task group, established by mayor Gary Korpan in 1995, to look at how library services are provided in Nanaimo.
City council established a committee in January of 1995 to review library services in Nanaimo. It recommended, among other things, that VIRL, Malaspina and the school district explore ways of cooperating in the delivery of services.
Whiteley said that although each library service has its own mandate and type of materials, there are ways to share information, especially electronic information.
Don Meadows, director of VIRL, says there have been efforts to share materials in the past but it has been difficult.
"Sharing of electronic resources is a lot easier, and I hope this is the beginning of collaborations of this kind. Catherine should be congratulated for making this available in a way from which we can all benefit," Meadows said.
Lillian Carefoot, director of learning instruction resources for school district 68, said that secondary schools in the district have been using the service since Christmas.
"We've already had very positive comments about how current and useful the information is," said Carefoot.
Tags: In the Community
