Volume 67, Issue 8

Libraries Install New Computer System
by Alexander Chester 

In a continuing effort to reach and surpass New York State’s standards for libraries, the Yeshiva library system has recently installed a new computerized Yeshiva University Library Information System (YULIS) catalog. The catalog includes information about the library collections at the Wilf and Midtown campuses, as well as the book collection at the Yeshiva University Museum.

The new program bodes significant enhancements over the previous YULIS catalog: access to individual library accounts via the Internet, online renewal of library materials checked out, and the ability to search the catalogs of libraries at other institutions, such as New York University, Columbia University, and others, via a single YULIS search.

This last feature was funded by a $10,000 grant from New York State through the Metropolitan New York Library Council. This grant was specified for the installation of the “z39.50 version 3” protocol for computer-to-computer communication.

This upgrade brings the Yeshiva library system into compliance with New York’s Electronic Doorway Libraries, which “provides access via the Internet to its own information resources and to information resources outside the library for both library personnel and users from both inside and outside the library.”

The basic difference between the old system and the new, according to Dean of Libraries Pearl Berger, is that “this new system is state of the art.” Yeshiva’s old system had been in place since the mid-1990s, but the new one was already in development even at that point. The decision was made to implement it in the summer of 2002, and it was finally deemed ready for public use by the beginning of this semester.

“We needed something that could accommodate Yeshiva’s collections, specifically the Hebrew collections,” said Berger. For instance, the new YULIS can display Hebrew characters with any regular computer, something which the old system could not do. “We also needed a system that provides the functionality people have come to expect on the Web. It was much too cumbersome to use the old system,” added Berger.

Berger is hopeful that students will appreciate the new system, which the librarians are already coming to immensely e “There are a lot of good things, and everything is nice and clear,” says reference librarian Marie Center.

Student opinion is divided. Some are pleased, including one student who specifically mentioned the option to mark and select catalog information for saving, printing or e-mail. “We could never do this before,” he said. “This makes research so much easier, like at a public library.”

Yeshiva College sophomore Zev Nagel, who uses YULIS frequently during research, said the new system is “so great and so easy to use.” Nagel said he had heard for a long time that the library was planning on improving its catalog system. “And this finally brings Yeshiva into the modern age,” he said.

Though Berger hopes that more students will experience the ease of the YULIS catalog, there is still a significant percentage of the student body that rarely uses the library in general. Students are either unaware or uninterested in YULIS, in spite of the library’s efforts to inform people.  “I just have never really gotten into that stuff, to be honest,” said Sy Syms sophomore Uri Burger, “and I don’t really think that the new system would make me more likely to try it out.”

The new YULIS catalog is available from any computer, simply by going to the library homepage at www.yu.edu/libraries/home.htm, and then by clicking on the “YULIS Catalog” link. “I would like to have the URL changed,” says Berger, preferably to something jingoistic and easy to remember. “I’ve looked into it, and we’ll see what happens.” ¨

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