Librarian of the College Sherre Harrington explained that the change is the result of a process that began four years ago. After four years, the collective Five College "system selection team" ultimately decided to replace the old catalog with the "Aleph" engine produced by tech company XLibris.
"XLibris provides us with a more open and stable platform for going forward," she said. Although each of the Five Colleges is using the same software, it affords enough individual flexibility for each college to make independent developments.
The old library system was configured into what Harrington termed "clumps." According to Harrington, the Amherst, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire and UMass libraries operated separately in two systems that inhibited independent development. It was also difficult for Amherst students to access UMass's larger library, with approximately 3.2 million volumes.
More importantly, however, the old vendor, Innovator Interfaces, stopped supporting the former catalog software. Instead of finding updated software from the same company, the Five College selection team chose XLibris from a pool of five vendors.
The library staff last week faced initial set-up issues, including the catalog's inability to properly process book requests from other colleges, and unusually slow system response. While the former was expected, the latter was largely unforeseen. Users of the new catalog also experienced various problems, and the catalog was down for repairs between Friday evening and Saturday morning.
Students who have begun to use the catalog offered mixed reactions. "It definitely looks more professional," said Kevin Choi '08. "The only major issue that I have with the change is that some of the functions don't work properly, such as requesting books from other colleges."
Harrington explained that such responses were inevitable given the enormity of the change. Furthermore, despite initial setbacks, Harrington said the two problems were fixed over the weekend. "The implementation team made changes in how the database is set up in order to streamline system performance that appears to have been successful," said Harrington. "Problems with requesting items from other Five College libraries have been resolved."
Minh Bui '08 recommended the use of the advanced search instead of the default search option because the latter usually yields a much larger result pool because results from all five colleges are shown. With better coordination among the five libraries, students at the College will be able to access a much larger fund of information than ever before.