2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
our users, and that method needed to work with our current content vendors. The
search was on.
Both issues were worked simultaneously. As one piece of the puzzle fell into place,
we took a look at the whole puzzle, to make sure we were still creating the right
picture.
We subscribe to both link resolver and discovery platform offered by Serials
Solutions. They were moving into the access control field, so we decided to work
with them to implement that service as well. After a few false starts, the access
control product was terminated by the vendor. We were back to the drawing
board.
I attended presentations by two competing access control services: TDNet and
OCLC’s EZ Proxy. We looked at the offerings, compared the services to our own
needs, and chose EZ Proxy. We started the configuration process around the end
of the year. We chose to have our service hosted, as we did not have the
equipment, staff, or authorization to host our own instance. We submitted a
configuration list consisting of our vendors and access links. In late winter, we
received a test menu of our configuration, and we started tweaking. We were able
to use our ILS vendor as an identity provider to EZ Proxy. Once a customer
registered for an account, he/she had access to our licensed content in 24 hours.
We were also able to restrict access by Patron Type. Patron Types were hard-coded
into the config file and designated as “valid” or “not valid.” We could now offer our
licensed content to all authorized library cardholders.
Also in late fall, we acquired a trial of LibGuides from Springshare. As we started
creating content, we realized that this platform offered exactly what we wanted in a
Customer Intranet. We can have an unlimited number of content creators. The
site admin assigns permissions to the content creators as needed, giving more staff
the ability to add content. Creating content in the platform is very easy. Live and
recorded training is available, but the GUI is very intuitive. Content is easily reused
and shared, making updates much easier than coding separate pages in a site. We
discovered that our A-Z list could be imported from our Data Management list in
Serials Solutions. The import process took a few seconds at most, and our A-Z list
was duplicated. These “master” links could then be re-used on other “pages.” As
the links change, staff update the master list, and all other re-used links are
updated at the same time. Our access control product works seamlessly, as using
access control is as easy as checking a box. Customization of the header and
footer is as easy as entering the code. If you have no code to enter, but want
customization, the staff at Springshare will help you out. This platform lives in The
Cloud, which means your content does not need to be altered locally and uploaded
to another server; eliminating the need to understand yet another application. In
the six months we have been with the platform, we have not lost access once. SEO
is optimized, making our content discoverable in search engines (read “Google”).
We have since learned that our LibGuides content is also discoverable via Summon,
Serials Solutions’ discovery platform.