THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506010224
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 45 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK
CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: KILL DEVIL HILLS LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
LIBRARY RESEARCH used to be a grueling, all-day affair wrought with frustration. Even with today's computers, finding information can be cumbersome.
But Dare County's Kill Devil Hills branch library has found a way to make the process almost as easy as going to the cash machine.
Info Trac, an automated reference system, has received rave reviews from patrons since its three-month trial run began about a month ago, said Kill Devil Hills branch librarian Barbara White. And the prospect of losing the service has launched White on a quest to find the funds to continue it beyond the free trial.
``It's to fill a public need,'' she said. ``Now I'm trying to find out from the public: `Do you think we need this?' and go from there.''
2 Comments from patrons who have used the service, jotted on a pad next to the machine, include: ``Outstanding,'' ``a great help,'' ``excellent,'' ``incredibly easy to use.''
A product of Information Access Co. of Foster City, Calif., Info Trac offers CD-ROM databases - updated monthly - on hundreds of magazines, newspapers and journals. The subscription currently at Kill Devil Hills includes indexing, abstracts or full text of more than 150 periodicals, two news services and four almanacs.
``There has not been anything like this other than our reader's guide,'' White said, adding that the technology's speed and ease of use is the direction libraries must move toward. As it stands now, anyone seeking information not on the library stacks must make an inter-library loan request, a notoriously time-consuming and often costly process.
But with the CD-ROM service, a patron can sit at a computer terminal, find the subject area of interest, scan the available data, choose the relevant information and print it out - within minutes.
The catch, as always, is money. The service would cost the library about $3,400 a year for a subscription to the software, and $1,000 to lease the required hardware.
White said it is possible that the Kill Devil Hills, Manteo and Hatteras branches could rig up the hardware from existing equipment. Eventually, she said, the goal would be networking the service among the branches.
Despite the expense, a spokesman for Info Trac says the product is cost-effective.
``The average cost of an inter-library loan is $31 per transaction,'' said Daniel Woods, director of marketing and customer services for Info Trac. ``If we can get that information to the library electronically, that saves a lot of money.''
Woods also said that as far as information services go in today's information-hungry culture, Info Trac is relatively middle-of-the-road. Systems connected to the Internet, for instance, can be far more expensive and complicated.
``Our product came out eight years ago (and) was developed on what was available at that time,'' he said. ``It does not really require a sophisticated system.''
Libraries are finding themselves in competition with computer on-line services, and Woods said although he finds libraries are typically underfunded, they are spending a greater percentage of their budgets on electronic databases.
``Increasingly, libraries are seeing their futures based on whether they can position themselves as a 24-hour information source,'' he said.
In her enthusiasm to take advantage of the CD-ROM offer, White conceded her timing was probably off. The county budget is nearing approval, she noted, and potential users in the school population will be on vacation the bulk of the trial period.
Nonetheless, her goal is to find alternate funding sources this year through civic groups and individual contributions, and then work to incorporate the expense into next year's budget.
The Dare County library system is funded by county dollars supplemented by state funds, White said. The recommended library budget proposed in the county's 1995-96 spending plan, which must be approved by July 1, is $347,414. The libraries are asking for $403,387, nearly $2,000 less than the previous year's budget.
White is optimistic that once the public sees how useful and easy a tool the CD-ROM service is, they will be willing to invest in it. She added that the last upgrade of library services was the computerized inter-library loan system.
``It's been a long time since anything of this type has been available,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Librarian Assistant Sylvia Jackson, 35, of Manteo, retrieves an
article after referencing it on InfoTrac at the Kill Devil Hills
branch of the Dare County Library.
by CNB