One of my New Year resolutions was to return library books on time. I'm an impulse shopper kind of person; if a piece of reading material catches my eye (which happens quite often), I have to have it. So I'm taking books home pretty much every day. They end up on my bookshelf and a month later, I receive an email saying this material is a week overdue, that material is five days overdue, and the other new movie I checked out is also a week overdue. The fines add up!
So, not to sound like a late night infomercial, I have a solution. I am testing a service called Elf, a web based and tool that alerts the user to impending due dates by email. The preferences are customizable; they can be set up to send the notification a certain number of days before the due date, or it could be set up to send a weekly reminder on a designated day of the week. This would be convenient for those who come into the library every Wednesday, for example.
The Basic service described above is free; however, there is also a Premium service that, for a fee, compiles a summary of accounts for families with more than one card, or for those who have library cards at more than one library.
The Berks County Public Library System library cards are accessable through this service; anyone who has an RPL card or a BCPL card may sign up for an account. I will post a follow-up of my success (or failure) with ELF.
4 comments:
This is a sweet service. They just started charging for it if the library isn't a corporate subscriber - is the Berks system?
Anyway, it's well worth it if you are a library user with a card at Kutztown or Penn State as well at one of the BCPLs.
I'm a librarian, so naturally a) I'm a library user and b) have a few library cards, not just one. This is a benefit for the many, however - not just for one or two people.
Check out librarything.com too! You can catalog your own library with a cheap $15 barcode reader. If you have a Mac, a product called Delicious Monster helps you keep lists of almost anything you own that ships with a barcode.
It's understandable, yet a little sad, that Library Elf had to go to a paid model. I've enjoyed seeing the status of my materials and getting warnings that something ominous was about to happen unless I took action. It hasn't saved me $20 (the cost of the premium service which checks all the library cards from libraries in beta status with Library Elf), so I'm not ready to fork over the money. Nevertheless, I like it.
My collection has been cataloged on LibraryThing under "vesuvian". I paid the lifetime fee for that product because I believe in the company. And yes, I did use one of the $15 barcode readers to scan in my items.
I'm also a Mac user and have worked with Delicious Monster. I do not want to rescan my books, so I'll see if I can export the ISBN numbers and import them into Delicious.
Delicious is good if you want to keep your collections of things private; LibraryThing is strongest if you want to write reviews about your materials. Most people in the US aren't going to be very interested in your opinion of your last three-pack of Gold Toe socks. On the other hand, your review of 44 Scotland Street will be more interesting to more people.
RPL is not yet a corporate subscriber to Elf, but I did try to introduce the idea to the Sys Admin. Perhaps in the future we may be able to offer this service.
I have a account on LibraryThing (which I haven't really kept up with) as well as an account on another site called Shelfari. As far as cataloging a collection goes, Shelfari is somewhat cumbersome, but for any kind of social networking concerning books, it is great. You can join or create subject specific discussion groups, connect with friends or strangers who share your reading interests and read and post reviews, in addition to maintaining a public bookshelf.
I am definitely going to have to consider the barcode reader. I didn't realize they were that cheap, and I would need it, as I could quite possibly have the largest collection of science fiction paperbacks outside the Berks County Library System.
Jennifer -
With Delicious Monster, if you have a Mac with cam, all you need to do is wave the barcode in front of the camera and it reads it, does the lookup, and adds the item to your collection. It's brainless, and while the (Mac) software is a little more expensive than a $15 reader, it's a very-well-executed product. And it does UPCs on DVD cases.
Note that, for those of you who have geeky relatives or passed through a geeky phase yourself, that the barcode reader they're selling is the old Radio Shack Cue:Cat (I think that's the way it's written). It comes in USB and keyboard/mouse port formats, and I think there are converters so they can be used in USB ports. Ask around and you may find one in the basement or the attic.
Time for sushi.
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