The Prospector system will be doing an upgrade of its underlying operating system on Monday, February 20th. The system will have short outages after 9pm while the servers are rebooting. As always we apologize for the inconvenience. If the system is unresponsive on Monday night please try again in a few minutes.
The Prospector team
help@coalliance.org
Some items are currently missing from the Prospector catalog. These items where originally loaded into the database, but aren’t displaying in Prospector. Our vendor is aware of the issue and is in the process of fixing it. If you find an item in a local catalog that should be in Prospector, please contact the circulation desk at your local library; they should be able to work with the lending library to get the item for you. We apologize for the temporary inconvenience.
On Thursday, January 12th the Prospector servers had additional disk drives added to accommodate the addition of new libraries as well as future software upgrades. The installation was successful and all services are fully restored. We apologize for the intermittent outages on January 12th but all is now back to normal.
George Machovec
help@coalliance.org
Over the next few weeks some of the libraries in Prospector will be closed for the holiday and items from the sites will not be available for lending through Prospector. Here is a list of those libraries and dates that items will not be available for request.
At the beginning of any academic semester students are rushing to get textbooks. Historically, most academic libraries do not collect text books per se, however, some may be found in Prospector. In addition, many classes have books which are required for class which may not be classified as textbooks but are required reading. Many of these can be found and requested through Prospector.
A couple of helpful suggestions for identifying textbooks in Prospector include:
Good luck with the new semester in school.
The Prospector team.
You’ve searched Prospector and still can’t find what you are looking for? Don’t despair. Prospector now provides a bridge to WorldCat, the world’s largest network of library resources that includes items from libraries in your local community as well as those around the world. You will find popular books, CDs, DVDs, scholarly works and other items through WorldCat.
After you enter a search in Prospector, simply click on the WorldCat button in the top right hand corner of the screen under the “Other Resources” section. The search will then be re-executed in WorldCat.
WorldCat button in Prospector catalog
Just as there are options to limit by format in Prospector, the same is true in WorldCat. For instance you can limit search result sets to formats such as video, archival materials, books, periodicals, etc.
Once you find something of interest in WorldCat, you can enter your zip code to locate the nearest library that owns this resource. Usually you will link directly to the record in the library’s catalog. The actions available on the page will vary from library to library. You may be able to join a waiting list, check an item out, or even have an item shipped and delivered to you. You can also contact your local library to let them know you would like to order an item that you found on WorldCat.
Record in WorldCat
On August 2, 2011 Summit County Libraries went live in the Prospector system. This means that public library patrons from Frisco, Silverthorne and Breckenridge may now borrow materials through the union catalog.
The Summit County Library acquires, organizes and provides access to information/media for the residents and visitors of Summit County to inform, enrich and entertain. The library serves its patrons at three libraries Frisco (Main Library), Silverthorne (North Branch) and Breckenridge (South Branch). The Summit County Libraries are the learning centers of our community where people of all ages and cultures come for discovery of ideas, joy of reading and power of information. The Summit County Libraries embrace their rich heritage and the exciting future of our community by creating opportunities to participate, connect and discover. The Summit County Libraries work together to serve the growing and diverse constituency and respond to the changing nature of library services.
On November 1, 1861 Summit County was named as one of the 17 original Colorado Counties by the First Territorial Legislature. It was named because of the many mountain summits which exist in the region. By 1883 the County obtained its current boundaries.
More information about Summit County Libraries may be found on their Website at http://summitcountylibraries.org/.
More information about Prospector may be obtained from your local library or by visiting the Prospector Website at http://www.coalliance.org/prospector. It was made possible for Summit County to join Prospector as a result of their membership with the Marmot Library Network (http://www.marmot.org/). Prospector is managed and operated by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (http://www.coalliance.org) who may be contacted at help@coalliance.org.
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George Machovec Associate Director Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries george@coalliance.org |
Rose Nelson Systems Librarian Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries rose@coalliance.org |
Prospector has a new mobile Web service (http://bridge.coalliance.org ) which supports the growing use of smartphones and other handheld computing devices. The interface is not a product-specific app but rather a mobile friendly Web interface so that it is universally accessible to any small screen device. Although functionality on the mobile interface is not as rich as the desktop version of Prospector, it still supports core functionality and the ability to borrow materials right from your smartphone. Give it a try
The University of Denver Penrose Library has finished moving its library collection to off-campus storage for library renovation. The library has been reactivated for lending materials in Prospector. When DU patrons borrow Prospector materials they may be picked-up at the Driscoll Ballroom, the library’s interim location on campus.
As details for accessing collections and services develop, find updates on the project website http://library.du.edu/site/academicCommons
The new Prospector interface (http://www.coalliance.org/prospector) has added a Google Preview link for books. This link appears at the full record for a book and will lead the reader to a preview of the book being offered by Google Editions. You will be able to read portions of the book in a book reader and it will help you determine if this book is worth requesting through Prospector. In some cases, if full access to the book is not needed this peek into the book may be all you need.
The Google Preview link only appears on about 20% of the full book records in Prospector.
It should be noted that Prospector also offers millions of ebooks which have been licensed by libraries. The Google Preview is not intended to replace these full length ebooks which may be read online and in some cases downloaded into different brands of ebook readers.
For more information contact your local library or help@coalliance.org
