Idaho’s libraries to link up

BOISE – It may get much easier for Idahoans to find a book they’re looking for, even if their local library is just a small one.

Idaho’s libraries are launching a project to link every library in the state in an electronic catalog and interlibrary loan system. By the year 2008, the project will include every interested public and school library in the state.

“It really feels like the library community is ready for this,” said Associate State Librarian Ann Joslin, after an enthusiastic session about the project at the annual state librarians’ conference Friday in Boise. “We had people say, ‘We just want to thank the state library for taking this on.’ “

Some of Idaho’s 105 public libraries, including many in North Idaho, already are linked in smaller regional interlibrary loan programs and electronic catalogs. But others, including many school libraries, don’t even have computerized cataloging yet, and still are relying on old-fashioned card catalogs.

Among those is the public library in Cascade, whose director welcomed the project on Friday.

The small-town library hasn’t been doing any interlibrary loans, Joslin said, because “they don’t know who has what.”

The new project, dubbed LiLI Unlimited, will do more than fix that. Idaho’s library catalogs will be joined in an online catalog that also will be a subset of WorldCat, an international database. That will allow searches for titles even outside the state or country.

The project joins other LiLI – or Libraries Linking Idaho – services including databases accessible from libraries across the state.

Joslin said the “LiLI Unlimited” name “is appropriate, because books can take you anywhere – and this is a big step toward making materials available anytime and to anyone.”

The $2.4 million, four-year project will be funded largely by federal grant money under the Library Services and Technology Act, along with some state dollars and a match from participating local libraries.

“Montana has been doing this for about four years,” Joslin said. “Illinois is in the process of implementing it. Florida, Alaska and Iowa are looking at it.”

More than 200 librarians from across the state attended the state library conference, which concluded Friday.