Technical Services Interest Group

  • Private Community
 View Only
last person joined: 24 days ago 

Charge: Provides a broad framework for information exchange on current developments and activities related to technical services.
Community members can post as a new Discussion or email ALA-acrltsig@ConnectedCommunity.org
Before you post: please note job postings are prohibited on ALA Connect. Please see the Code of Conduct for more information.

  • 1.  Opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing

    Posted Apr 28, 2021 01:36 PM
    I would love to hear opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing. I'd be interested in other low cost ILS too.

    Currently we use Horizon and are down to less than 100,000 item records for physical items. We've been aggressively weeding and purchasing electronic copies over the past 5 years. We're working towards a 100% online library for our students, but will likely make it to 99%. I anticipate keeping <5,000 books at one campus location, hence the 99%.

    If you don't have experience in TinyCat or low cost options - but have experience with ILS management and migrations - I'd love to hear your "keep this mind..." comments!

    ------------------------------
    Mary Snyder
    Convener for ACRL - Librarianship in For-Profit Educational Institutions DG
    University Librarian @ Strayer University
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing

    Posted Apr 29, 2021 10:45 AM
    I use TinyCat for the synagogue library where I coordinate our library committee. Feel free to contact me with any questions. My experience has been that it works pretty well, and is a great solution for small collections. 

    Ginny
    --
    Ginny Moran, MLIS
    she/her/hers
    Fine Arts & Humanities Instruction & Research Librarian
    DeWitt Wallace Library/MacalesterCollege
    Living and working on Wahpekute land
    http://bit.ly/GinnyApptHours




    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing

    Posted Apr 29, 2021 04:46 PM
    Thank you! Did you create the item records in LibraryThing or did you import MARC records from elsewhere?

    ------------------------------
    Mary Snyder
    Convener for ACRL - Librarianship in For-Profit Educational Institutions DG
    University Librarian @ Strayer University
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing

    Posted Apr 29, 2021 09:35 PM
    We created the records in LibraryThing, because there was nothing before, and we couldn't afford anything else. I haven't tried to import records. Reading their Talk pages, it seems like it could take some work. I might reach out to LT folks since you have so many?

    Hope this helps, 

    Ginny
    --
    Ginny Moran, MLIS
    she/her/hers
    Fine Arts & Humanities Instruction & Research Librarian
    DeWitt Wallace Library/MacalesterCollege
    Living and working on Wahpekute land
    http://bit.ly/GinnyApptHours




    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Opinions on TinyCat and LibraryThing

    Posted Apr 30, 2021 08:43 AM
    After trying some other options, I've settled on LT and TinyCat for our church library (5000+ items). You lose some of the finesse of a totally MARC-based system, but it has the critical functions I need in an OPAC: author, title, keyword, and limiting by format & language. The one area that is less developed is subject searching, but I worked around that by using the tags with a simplified subject thesaurus based on LC subject headings. I had to double up on some things to get the "faceting" I wanted (e.g. the tag "Matthew--Commentaries" always accompanied by the tag "Matthew" so the user can broaden out from the "Commentaries" subdivision).

    A huge factor in settling on this was its practicality for our situation. It's web-based, so you don't have to know how to set up a system on a server (or depend on volunteer church IT staff to do it). It gives you a lot of features for a low price (we're on the paying plan since we passed the 5,000-volume ceiling for the free version). And it's easy enough to maintain that it I'll be able to hand it over to a volunteer with a reasonable amount of training.

    David
    Cataloger, Mary Coutts Burnett Library
    Texas Christian University
    (the library where I get paid, not the library where I am using LT/TinyCat)

    ------------------------------
    David Hamrick
    Cataloger
    Texas Christian University, Mary Coutts Burnett Library
    ------------------------------

    Original Message