Thunder Bay and Simcoe Muskoka Health Units Launch Shared Library Catalogue

Published May 12, 2014

In 2012, Andornot worked with the Thunder Bay District Health Unit to upgrade their DB/TextWorks library system from the older Inmagic Library Module kit to the much newer Genie Integrated Library System.

This year, the Simcoe Muskoka Health Unit merged their MS Access library catalogue into this shared Genie system, providing both health units with a modern, up-to-date system for managing library holdings, serial subscriptions, orders, and more.

Amongst health care agencies in Canada, it is quite common to share library systems and resources – it makes good economic sense, and helps users and patients to more easily find resources with a single search point.

The public and patients may search the combined library holdings through http://ophc.andornot.com, a discovery interface powered by the VuFind open source software.

VuFind includes features such as:

Spelling suggestions and corrections.
Faceted browsing to allow users to refine searches by subject, date, collection, and other key fields.
A mobile interface.
Google Book covers for records with ISBNs.
Permalinks to records to allow easy bookmarking and social sharing.
User accounts to allow users to save searches and records to personal lists.
RSS feeds for user-created searches.

A custom request form developed by Andornot allows users to direct a request to borrow items to the appropriate health unit.

Data is automatically imported into the VuFind system nightly using the Andornot Data Extraction Utility, so there’s no additional work needed by library staff.

The shared Genie system is hosted by Andornot as part of our managed hosting service. Working with two separate groups on a joint system can be tricky, but in this case the cooperation between the library staff in the two health units allowed us to complete the project in a very tight time frame.

"Thanks very much for all of your hard work on this project. It is very much appreciated by us and will be by our clients." Amy Faulkner, Librarian, SMDHU

"You’ve done an exceptional job and we’re all quite appreciative of your hard work and discipline to get this through in such short time frames." Shant Alajajian, Librarian, TBDHU