You See a Lot More

Imagine a place where you can get the local news and weather while taking a gander at the latest books and videos at your library. Now, The Library Corporation (TLC) and CARL Corporation have made enhancements to their popular YouSeeMore product that enables patrons to do just that. Library users can create their own personalized, interactive library Web page.

"The system will remember a certain page for a patron, complete with information on the patron's favorite authors or the latest mystery books if she's a fan of that genre, for instance," explains Trish Ridgeway, library director of the Handley Regional Library in Winchester, VA, the first library to go online with the new technology. Patrons can use their personalized Web portals to place holds on books, search the library's online catalog, and check on overdue items and fines. The new technology also serves as a simple readers' advisory service, sending alerts about new titles in a user's favorite genres.

While libraries currently using TLC's online catalog services will be able to upgrade to YouSeeMore for a fee, the "library supersite" will be available at no extra charge to libraries signing up as new TLC customers. "We feel people will come back to [their own personalized page] again and again—and to us," says Ridgeway, whose library just doubled in size. TLC performs the initial installation over the Web and a library receives the tools to maintain YouSeeMore after that. Also, YouSeeMore is "hosted" by TLC (www.tlcdelivers.com), which means subscribing libraries don't need to allocate a server for it.