SUNCAT were invited to present at the North West Libraries Interlending Partnership meeting on Wednesday 14th May, in Preston. The presentation included an introduction to and demonstration of SUNCAT, as well as focussing on how the service can help Inter-Library Loan (ILL) librarians and researchers making ILL requests. As a freely available service SUNCAT is an ideal location tool for ILLs allowing librarians and researchers to view the holdings of 66 libraries in one search.
After the presentation SUNCAT held a short “surgery” along with the British Library and the Transport Provider (DX) where participants were able to ask more in-depth questions about the service.
There was significant interest from the participants who were keen to see SUNCAT include more public libraries, links to table of contents services, such as Zetoc and closer integration with ILL request mechanisms. We also carried out a short survey with the participants and will post the results of this shortly.
All in all this was a very useful and informative event for SUNCAT, allowing us to disseminate news to one of our key user groups while also gathering feedback which will help us to improve the service appropriately.
We are also happy to report that the journey back from Preston to Glasgow was somewhat quieter than the trip down, without the company of many thousands of Rangers fans!