Central and Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing , or CW MARS , is a library consortium in central and western Massachusetts dedicated to efficient resource sharing and rapid access to information. CW MARS was formed in 1982 to promote resource sharing among 28 public and academic libraries through a shared library automation system. In 1984, the network was incorporated as a 501(3)(c) not-for-profit corporation and the first member libraries began circulating on the shared system.
27-704: CW MARS is governed by its member libraries in the form of a User's Council, which approves the annual budget, establishes CW MARS policies, and elects officers to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee works to develop and recommend policies, budget and membership. CW MARS has a professional staff for support of its integrated library system (ILS), network functions and the Digital Treasures library. As of 2021, CW MARS has more than 150 members and 175 branch locations, including public, academic, school, and special libraries. CW MARS offers
54-452: A library , used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed. An ILS is usually made up of a relational database , software to interact with that database, and two graphical user interfaces (one for patrons, one for staff). Most ILSes separate software functions into discrete programs called modules, each of them integrated with a unified interface. Examples of modules might include: Each patron and item has
81-458: A number of applications aimed at managing documents, photographs, and other digitized or born-digital items such as Digital Commons and DSpace . Particularly in academic libraries, these systems (often known as digital library systems or institutional repository systems) assist with efforts to preserve documents created by faculty and students. Electronic resource management helps librarians to track selection, acquisition, and licensing of
108-463: A number of systems that share much in common with library catalogs, but have traditionally been distinguished from them. Libraries utilize these systems to search for items not traditionally covered by a library catalog, although these systems are sometimes integrated into a more comprehensive discovery system . Bibliographic databases —such as Medline , ERIC , PsycINFO , and many others—index journal articles and other research data. There are also
135-659: A partnership since they no longer have the power of owning the ILS software and tying down libraries to strict contracts. This has been the case with the SCLENDS consortium; following the success of Evergreen for the Georgia PINES library consortium, the South Carolina State Library along with some local public libraries formed the SCLENDS consortium in order to share resources and to take advantage of
162-411: A shared online computer system and combined collections of more than nine million items. This article relating to a library organization, association, or consortium is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Integrated library system An integrated library system ( ILS ), also known as a library management system ( LMS ), is an enterprise resource planning system for
189-513: A unique ID in the database that allows the ILS to track its activity. Prior to computerization, library tasks were performed manually and independently from one another. Selectors ordered materials with ordering slips, cataloguers manually catalogued sources and indexed them with the card catalog system (in which all bibliographic data was kept on a single index card), fines were collected by local bailiffs, and users signed books out manually, indicating their name on clue cards which were then kept at
216-527: Is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries . Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously used in libraries. Although a handful of experimental systems existed as early as the 1960s, the first large-scale online catalogs were developed at Ohio State University in 1975 and the Dallas Public Library in 1978. These and other early online catalog systems tended to closely reflect
243-404: The card catalogs that they were intended to replace. Using a dedicated terminal or telnet client, users could search a handful of pre-coordinate indexes and browse the resulting display in much the same way they had previously navigated the card catalog. Throughout the 1980s, the number and sophistication of online catalogs grew. The first commercial systems appeared, and would by the end of
270-871: The ILS market grew exponentially. By 2002, the ILS industry averaged sales of approximately US$ 500 million annually, compared to just US$ 50 million in 1982. By the mid to late 2000s, ILS vendors had increased not only the number of services offered but also their prices, leading to some dissatisfaction among many smaller libraries. At the same time, open-source ILS was in its early stages of testing. Some libraries began turning to such open-source ILSs as Koha and Evergreen . Common reasons noted were to avoid vendor lock-in, avoid license fees, and participate in software development. Freedom from vendors also allowed libraries to prioritize needs according to urgency, as opposed to what their vendor can offer. Libraries which have moved to open-source ILS have found that vendors are now more likely to provide quality service in order to continue
297-512: The MIT Engineering Library in 1972 showed that it was preferred over two other systems, ARDS and DATEL. The 1970s can be characterized by improvements in computer storage, as well as in telecommunications. As a result of these advances, "turnkey systems on microcomputers", known more commonly as integrated library management systems (ILS) finally appeared. These systems included necessary hardware and software which allowed
SECTION 10
#1732790833669324-561: The Washington Library Network (which became Western Library Network and is also now part of OCLC). The Intrex Retrieval System ran on CTSS starting in the late 1960s. Intrex was an experimental, pilot-model machine-oriented bibliographic storage and retrieval system with a database that stored a catalog of roughly 15,000 journal articles. It was used to develop and test concepts for library automation. A deployment of three Intrex BRISC CRT consoles for testing at
351-488: The circulation desk. Early mechanization came in 1936, when the University of Texas began using a punch card system to manage library circulation. While the punch card system allowed for more efficient tracking of loans, library services were far from being integrated, and no other library task was affected by this change. The next big innovation came with the advent of MARC standards in the 1960s, which coincided with
378-793: The connection of major circulation tasks, including circulation control and overdue notices. As the technology developed, other library tasks could be accomplished through ILS as well, including acquisition, cataloguing , reservation of titles, and monitoring of serials . With the evolution of the Internet throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, ILSs began allowing users to more actively engage with their libraries through an OPACs and online web-based portals. Users could log into their library accounts to reserve or renew books, as well as authenticate themselves for access to library-subscribed online databases . Education for librarians responded with new focus on systems analysis. Inevitably, during this time,
405-416: The customer can choose to self-install or to have the system installed by the vendor on their own hardware. The customer can be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the application and the data, or the customer can choose to be supported by the vendor with an annual maintenance contract. Some vendors charge for upgrades to the software. Customers who subscribe to a web (hosted) service upload data to
432-561: The decade largely replace systems built by libraries themselves. Library catalogs began providing improved search mechanisms, including Boolean and keyword searching, as well as ancillary functions, such as the ability to place holds on items that had been checked-out. At the same time, libraries began to develop applications to automate the purchase, cataloging, and circulation of books and other library materials. These applications, collectively known as an integrated library system (ILS) or library management system, included an online catalog as
459-399: The development of newer (often termed 'next-generation') catalogs. Newer generations of library catalog systems, typically called discovery systems (or a discovery layer ), are distinguished from earlier OPACs by their use of more sophisticated search technologies, including relevancy ranking and faceted search , as well as features aimed at greater user interaction and participation with
486-407: The growth of computer technologies – library automation was born. From this point onwards, libraries began experimenting with computers, and, starting in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, bibliographic services utilizing new online technology and the shared MARC vocabulary entered the market. These included OCLC (1967), Research Libraries Group (which has since merged with OCLC), and
513-439: The holdings of a single library, they can also contain the holdings of a group or consortium of libraries. These systems, known as union catalogs , are usually designed to aid the borrowing of books and other materials among the member institutions via interlibrary loan . Examples of this type of catalogs include COPAC , SUNCAT , NLA Trove , and WorldCat —the latter catalogs the collections of libraries worldwide. There are
540-611: The number increased to 8%, in 2010 12%, and in 2011 11% of the libraries polled had adopted open-source ILSs. The following year's survey (published in April 2013) reported an increase to 14%, stating that "open source ILS products, including Evergreen and Koha, continue to represent a significant portion of industry activity. Of the 794 contracts reported in the public and academic arena, 113, or 14 percent, were for support services for these open source systems." The use of cloud-based library management systems has increased drastically since
567-418: The online catalog was often the first information retrieval system library users ever encountered. Now accustomed to web search engines, newer generations of library users have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the complex (and often arcane) search mechanisms of older online catalog systems. This has, in turn, led to vocal criticisms of these systems within the library community itself, and in recent years to
SECTION 20
#1732790833669594-468: The open-source nature of the Evergreen ILS to meet their specific needs. By October 2011, just 2 years after SCLENDS began operations, 13 public library systems across 15 counties had already joined the consortium, in addition to the South Carolina State Library. Librarytechnology.org does an annual survey of over 2,400 libraries and noted in 2008 2% of those surveyed used open-source ILS, in 2009
621-466: The public interface to the system's inventory. Most library catalogs are closely tied to their underlying ILS system. The 1990s saw a relative stagnation in the development of online catalogs. Although the earlier character-based interfaces were replaced with ones for the Web, both the design and the underlying search technology of most systems did not advance much beyond that developed in the late 1980s. At
648-452: The rise of cloud technology started. According to NIST , cloud computing can include a variety of "characteristics (e.g. self-service, resource pooling, and elasticity), management models (e.g. service, platform, or infrastructure focus), and deployment models (e.g. public, private)", and this is also true of cloud-based library systems. Library computer systems tend to fall into two categories of software: With distributed software
675-456: The same time, organizations outside of libraries began developing more sophisticated information retrieval systems. Web search engines like Google and popular e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com provided simpler to use (yet more powerful) systems that could provide relevancy ranked search results using probabilistic and vector-based queries. Prior to the widespread use of the Internet,
702-670: The system, including tagging and reviews. These new features rely heavily on existing metadata which may be poor or inconsistent, particularly for older records. Newer catalog platforms may be independent of the organization's integrated library system (ILS), instead providing drivers that allow for the synchronization of data between the two systems. While the original online catalog interfaces were almost exclusively built by ILS vendors, libraries have increasingly sought next-generation catalogs built by enterprise search companies and open-source software projects, often led by libraries themselves. Although library catalogs typically reflect
729-684: The vendor's remote server through the Internet and may pay a periodic fee to access their data. Many applications can reduce a major portion of manual data entry by populating data fields based upon the entered ISBN using MARC standards technology via the Internet. With most software, users can eliminate some manual entry by using a bar-code scanner. Some software is designed, or can be extended with an additional module, to integrate scanner functionality. Most software vendors provide some type of scanner integration, and some print bar-code labels. OPAC The online public access catalog ( OPAC ), now frequently synonymous with library catalog ,
#668331