Our request volume goes up all the time, as does the quantity of items
that patrons flip through and then abandon at the holds shelf.  The
better information they have up front before they make the request, in
theory, the lower the chance they'll request items that they then don't
pick up.

We recently added the Syndetics "enhanced content" that includes book
covers, selected first chapters, reviews, summaries, etc.
http://catalog.sonomalibrary.org
The patrons have been very happy with it, especially the book covers,
but it remains to be seen whether the additional content does reduce the
irrelevant-request volume.

This is a public library, so ymmv at academic libraries ...

Genny Engel


>>> [log in to unmask] 05/07/08 08:45AM >>>
I think Kyle brings up a great point. If we can get links to previews,
patrons will have a better understanding of what a book has to decide
if
they want to go to another library on campus to look at it, request it
to be
retrieved from off-site storage, ILL it, etc. This would be a very
useful
thing to many patrons, I think.

Edward

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Kyle Banerjee
<[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> > 0.2% full text? Yowch!
> >
> >  Do academic libraries with full-text versions of the book on
their
> >  shelves really want to point people to no-preview pages on
Google.
> >  That's like a dating site with no photos of the members, and the
> >  profiles omit everything but their favorite potato variety.
>
> At first, this whole thing reminded me of a few years back when
Amazon
> wanted libraries to load their inventory into catalogs. The idea was
> that letting people know an item that wasn't available in the
library
> could be bought from Amazon was a useful service. Not too many
> libraries were takers.
>
> 0.2% might even be better and worse than it looks. Worse in the
sense
> that it could be some random public domain garbage that there's
little
> or no demand for. However, at the end of the day the percentage of
> books available full text is far less important than if the ones
that
> are available are the ones that people want.
>
> On the other hand, if partial preview really is available for 6.2%,
it
> could be very useful for helping people decide if they need a book
at
> all. This has significant implications for ILL and circ costs over
the
> long haul. Presumably, the number of books with a preview available
> will increase dramatically with time.
>
> kyle
>