The virtual library seamlessly verifies eligibility for interlibrary loan. It is designed to expand capability to verify eligibility to access commercial information resources such as magazine indexes and full text articles and to provide access to databases created locally such as scanned photograph collections. In the first year, activities have been centered upon demonstrating the feasibility of providing the virtual catalog and interlibrary loan components. Additionally, efforts have proceeded to assist libraries in purchasing electronic database content. Today residents of three counties and students at private academic institutions in a fourth are able to use the virtual catalog from anywhere at anytime to both search catalogs and request that materials be sent to their local library outlet.
Visitors can also access and search the virtual catalog.
This project has been designed to build from a few libraries to a large portion of TBLC s membership. Interoperability with other systems in the State is a future goal. The software selected is modular and flexible relative to the features each member library will implement. TBLC has come very close to meeting the high levels of performance set for the grant. Over 1.15 million registered patrons in 20 libraries have access to over 1.8 million machine-readable bibliographic records.