Kid's Catalog Now on the Net

With the aid of cartoon–like icons and colorful graphics, Kid's Catalog software is designed to help elementary school students search their library catalogs for books and other materials. There's just one catch. In order to perform those searches, kids have to be physically present in the library.

But recently the TLC (The Library Corporation) teamed up with Kid's Catalog producer CARL Corporation to produce a new version of the product that will enable users to do catalog searches outside the library, over the Net. The new product, called Kid's Catalog Web, will also provide links to thousands of Web sites selected by CARL's librarians.

"It helps to focus the Web resources in a way that makes them more accessible so that children are more likely to find appropriate Internet resources on their subject at the same time that they are finding library materials," says product manager Sharon Morris. The new Kid's Catalog Web may also make life easier for librarians because it's server based. The original version had to be installed from a CD-ROM onto each computer terminal. That meant that whenever librarians wanted to update it with new content, they'd have to go to each computer in the district or branch. Now a software component called WebBuilder lets them update pages on the fly. For more information, visit www.carl.org/pubaccess/KC.html.