Dear Colleagues: many, many thanks for your responses to my question
regarding the impact of making the Library database available through the
institutional website. Since many of you have asked to see the results, they
are reported below, and I know others will find them as interesting and
helpful as we did.  All best regards, Rosemary.


From Becky Simmons, George Eastman House:

Our online catalog has been accessible from our web page for 2 months
now. I have seen a slight increase in e-mail reference questions.
However, this is more likely due to the fact that we also mounted a
custom reference query form directly accessible from the new Library web
page. Prior to that users with research questions were directed to an
Ask the Curator page. We were listed along with the other collections in
the Museum and the user could choose to query any of the six
collections. (Photography, Motion Pictures, Technology, Gardens, George
Eastman, and the Library). The Library did not have a direct link on the
Museum's first web page but was buried under Education and Research (we
were never consulted about the design!) I think people are now going to
the museum's web page, seeing the library link on the first page and
heading there immediately for their information needs. (Obviously they
have been taught well) ... my answer to your question is that we have seen
little change due to the
online catalog, but change due to the fact that the library is now more
visible on the institution's web page.


From Suzanne Freeman, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Library:

In terms of staff, our major task - PANDORA became available in January
online - is now to customize the first screen and to create a library web
page as an introduction.

Since we're a state agency, another problem was getting the infamous DIT
[Department of Information Technology] at the state level to get their act
together and get a line for us.  We also had to be placed on a cached server
*outside* our firewall, since the museum felt that allowing "penetration" of
the firewall to get to us posed too many security problems re: hackers.

Another major obstacle, yet to be resolved, is getting our webmaster - who
wears six other hats - to respond to our request that the library either be
listed prominently on the first page of the museum web site or as a
drop-down screen from a logical link [e.g. Resources, Research, Education]
and not parked between Disabled Visitors and the map of Richmond under
Visitor Information.  Additionally, he has not made the library a hot link
yet.  It can only be reached by typing in the URL
<http://www.pandora.vmfa.state.va.us> .


From Sheila Klos, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library:

Our online catalog was made available outside Dumbarton Oaks in 1998...
Before this time DO had only card catalogs,
although we had been contributing records for many years to OCLC and to
HOLLIS, the union catalog for Harvard libraries.  In theory, researchers
hoping to use our collection could have used HOLLIS remotely and prepared to
some extent before arriving at DO.  In reality, many did not.  (However,
this may have been partly a timing vs- technology thing.  Before 1998 many
of our scholars from eastern Europe and South America did not have easy
internet access, so HOLLIS would not have been an easy thing for them to use
remotely.  There was a distinct turning point in this regard in our
1999-2000 fellowship year).

Once our own catalog went online we began to notice a gradual increase in
advanced preparation on the part of visiting scholars (we're not open for
walk-ins; everyone must be authorized in advance to use the library
collections and generally speaking no one who is not at the doctoral level
or a post-doc is authorized)... In 18 months our remote usage has more than
doubled and we now
see resident fellows and visiting scholars arrive from foreign countries
with a clear idea of what we own and what they must use first to begin their
year of research on-site.

It has not meant an increase in reference questions from remote users,
probably because of the very specialized nature of our three subject areas
as well as clear statements posted on our web pages that our collections are
not open for browsing or research below the doctoral level.  Basically, if
they need help in Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, or landscape studies research
they'd contact us anyway, remote access to the online catalog or not.  It
has meant, in some cases, that the reference questions that come by phone or
email are somewhat better shaped and more appropriately targeted for our
library.  Very little of the "do you own this obscure text" sort of
question.  It's all there on the web catalog for them to scope out before
they make an initial contact with us.


From Janis Ekdahl, Museum of Modern Art Library:

Overall the impact of having DADABASE available on the MoMA's website has
been very positive:
--patrons arrive knowing exactly what material they want to consult ...
maximizing their time at the Library and reducing frustration on our part
--novice researchers can be directed to DADABASE to explore our holdings and
refine their search/topic before making a reading room appointment
--colleagues from around the world can easily consult our cataloging as a
bibliographic resource any time of day or night
--misspellings and errors in our records have been noted (and subsequently
corrected)
--authors/artists have discovered 'lacunae' in our holdings which they have
offered to fill


From Karen McKenzie, Library, Art Gallery of Ontario:

-- Researchers are searching the online catalogue in advance of visiting
the library, as we recommend they do, and arrive prepared with a list of
titles/shelf numbers in hand.  It saves both their own and staff time.

--  Many fewer phone calls/e-mails inquiring if a particular title is owned
by the library.

-- Out-of-town researchers are able to review library holdings when
planning research-related travel; this is especially useful for museum
curators who are usually on a tight budget.

-- There's an increase in ILL requests (ILL lending is fairly restricted).

-- 'Rules for readers' are overlooked:  although the library's web pages
warn that there's a card catalogue for older holdings and that archival
collections are not included in the online catalogue, these warnings seem
to be overlooked.  Ditto the need to make advance arrangements to see some
categories of material, and similar rules and regs.  It means more
preliminary discussion time between patrons and reference staff, and
sometimes dissatisfaction on the part of researchers when they learn it
isn't possible to have 25 rare books retrieved at once (and they're only in
town for the day).

-- The online catalogue has led to a distinct decline in use of materials
that are still in the card catalogue; this pattern is particularly clear
with researchers who first access the library catalogue on the web.
However, the result of this is positive from a management perspective:
records for archival collections are being developed (we have an active
collecting program for artist papers); and there's clear pressure to
convert the card catalogue, a ready-made rationale at budget time.

-- In terms of overall workload for reference staff, there's been moderate
growth but it's not unmanageable.

-- The institutional website is seen primarily as fulfilling a marketing
function.  The library's pages (and online catalogue) aren't obvious unless
the user gets fairly far into the site.  Having the online catalogue there
but hidden (so to speak) is frustrating for the library.


From Debbie Barlow Smedstad, Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Art:

Much to my surprise, when we finally got our catalogue up on our website, we
did NOT see a tremendous rise in the use of the library.  We have a few more
local students who have found us and "paper times" - November and April -
are
a little more busy, but there hasn't been a huge stampede.  This is a relief
since we don't have the staff to handle it.  We have had a dramatic increase
in the number of interlibrary loan requests received in the past few
years but this is most likely due to the increased number of records we have
on OCLC and not that the patrons are finding us through the web site.


From Ann Abid, Ingalls Library, Cleveland Museum of Art:

We finally got our OPAC online on the museum's web last
November and have not really noticed any activity as a result of this.  We
did get one ILL request from someone who had seen that we own a particular
book.  Before we went online, I contacted the Metropolitan and the Art
Institute of Chicago to see what their experience had been since we were a
bit concerned about whether or not the traffic on the museum's web server
would be too much as a result of hits on the library site.  Both assured me
that their experience was about 1000 hits/month to their library websites
and we ceased to worry.


From Margaret Shaw, Research Library, National Gallery of Australia:

We put both the catalogue and reference service details on at the same time
- followed quickly by a reference query form - so it is hard to tell
[chicken and egg effect].  We found the form necessary as the information in
e-mails was not adequate - in particular they tend to lack contact details
and addresses.  There is a wide expectation, particularly among younger
enquirers, that everything is available on-line and can be e-mailed back.

We have had a steady increase in external queries over the last 5 years and
we did notice a change from letters and faxes to e-mails although telephone
queries are still the highest number.

For the last three months  of 620 external queries  162 were e-mailed [the
query form for the most part]; 214 were telephoned and the remainder were
personal [reader's ticket holders, fax, letter].   A number of people had
looked at our catalogue first.

Australia also has a subscription--based national on-line catalogue
[Kinetica] so there are people recommended through other libraries and our
ILL tends to come from this or from other libraries in our consortium who
use the same catalogue data-base as we do.


From Tom Jacoby, Art & Design Library, University of Connecticut, Storrs:

The launching of the library online catalogs on the institutional
website has not been a problem, but the appearance of our visual resources
files of one-person shows has presented all kinds of increasing public
service
demands from all over the country and world. The One-person Visual Resources
Files are essentially file folders of ephemeral materials on various artists
arranged alphabetically by name ...
often there is only one brochure or exhibition announcement in the file ...
the materials
themselves do not necessarily indicate when an exhibiton was held so it is
hard to reconstruct when an exhibition actually took place and often for
older materials, the exhibiting institution is no longer in business.  At
this point the queries come to me as Art Librarian and they often take hours
to clarify and answer and they more often than not end in many e-mail
exchanges.  Some days, especially around Christmas and in summers, I spend
up to a quarter of my week answering these questions and the ensuing
questions they seme to spawn ...

In September, the CtCOPAR database will be moving from the Art & Design
Library to the Ct Historical Commission in Hartford where I will be
volunteering to see the database going public and probably end up being the
contact person for reference queries but that remains to be seen.

All of this to say----online catalogs have presented less of a problem to us
than unique databases that we have originated here in the Art & Design
Library and then put on the web.  They were created to be used and spare us
doing a lot of work, but they have so far resulted in our doing oodles more
work on top of everything else we do. We know when reference queries come
from the greater UCONN community and we tend to answer those in as much
detail as possible, but we can't leave other non-UCONN patrons without
service and it is hard to know how far to go with answers and they almost
invariably end up with going on over several days and weeks and talking all
kindsof time we don't have...  beware
if you are planning to go "public" with unique databases!

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