[OPLINLIST] CLC Provides a Custom Children's PAC

[Carol Roddy]

We are pleased to announce that children have their own space in the library catalog of the Central Library Consortium (CLC). Each member library provides access to children's library material using the especially customized series of menus that make up the Children's PAC, which is designed to enable folks to search the library catalog for only juvenile materials.  While our ILS vendor, Polaris, provides a children's PAC, the CLC libraries decided it needed extensive customization to be truly useful.

A committee of children's librarians chose eighteen top-level topics and divided them into a wide variety of subtopics and search targets each highlighted by a button that combines words and graphics. Subtopics for example, might lead children from Animals to Zoo Animals to Lions. In other areas, such as "Good Reads" the Children's PAC yields librarian-selected reading lists.

The Children's PAC is geared toward school-age children, parents and teachers. Parents, teachers, and other professionals use it to quickly pull up information about children's books, videos, and other material. The PAC was aimed, however, primarily at children in the younger grades. Early readers find visual cues to information.

It has been rolled out on the individual public catalogs of all eight Central Library Consortium member libraries. Staff from all eight contributed to its development.  Take a look here<http://catalog.clcohio.org/polaris/Children/default.aspx?ctx=17>!

We expect the Children's PAC to continue to evolve as we respond to school-assignments and changing interest.

The CLC member libraries are the Alexandria Public Library, Fairfield County District Library, Grandview Heights Public Library, Marysville Public Library, Pickaway County District Public Library, Pickerington Public Library, Plain City Public Library, and Wagnalls Memorial Library. For more information about the CLC visit www.clcohio.org<http://www.clcohio.org>.


Carol
Carol Lynn Roddy
Executive Director
Central Library Consortium
ph:  614-837-8533 x111
cell: 614-725-7724
fax: 614-829-0043
croddy at clcohio.org<mailto:croddy at clcohio.org>

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