GRANTS PUT LIBRARIES ON SUPERHIGHWAY

Thanks to a grant, card catalogs of all Riverside Regional Library facilities plus those at Jackson City Library and Bloomfield Public Library soon will be available online for library users to browse from home.

The local consortium linking Riverside with Jackson and Bloomfield libraries is part of a statewide goal to link all the public libraries in Missouri using the Internet and automated circulation systems.

The process is slow and expensive. Many libraries, including Riverside, Jackson and Bloomfield, still check out books the old-fashioned way with a rubber stamp and cards.

Riverside received $33,520 to computerize its card catalog.

In addition, Jackson City Library, Bloomfield Public Library and Bollinger County Library all received grants through Missouri's Public Library Automation Grant Program.

Secretary of State Bekki Cook will award $3 million to improve technology in Missouri's public libraries. So far 41 grants totaling just over $2 million have been awarded.

"Libraries play a major role in providing citizens of Missouri access to that information, and automation is a key to that access," Cook said. "Our goal is providing citizens in all parts of the state fast access to the wonderful information superhighway."

The local consortium could be operational as soon as September.

For library patrons, the change should be dramatic, said Geoffrey Roth, director of Riverside Regional Library.

"It will allow anyone out there on the Internet to check out our holdings. You can do author and title searches," he said. "You can even reserve a book."

Riverside Regional Library has branches in Cape Girardeau, Scott and Perry counties. The new system will tie together all the facilities.

"With the addition of Jackson Public Library and Bloomfield Public, we're just have more stuff," Roth said.

Riverside Regional Library must put bar codes on 140,000 items. Bar codes are similar to pricing codes. A checkout scanner reads information about a book into the computer.

The project will cost more than $33,520, Roth explained. But he is working on additional funding.

"This is really one of those situations where everyone benefits," he said. "Library patrons benefit by increased availability and access to the holdings. We benefit by an easier and more efficient circulation system."

Grants to $3,060 to the Jackson library and $3,338 to the Bloomfield library go toward costs of bar coding their holdings and automating the circulation system.

Bollinger County Library is in the second stage of its automation project. It received $14,792 for computer hardware and software. Earlier it had grant funding for the bar-coding process for the library's 40,000 items.

In all, the library has received about $35,000 in grants for the project, said Eva Dunn, library director.

In addition to computer access to the card catalog in the library, two computers will be available for public Internet access.

Without the statewide grant program, Dunn said, the Bollinger County Library was years from being automated.

"We are now a part of the program to get all the libraries linked," she said. "In the future, you will be able to sit here and check out what we have at this library and also check the library in Kansas City. We are very excited to be part of that."