The Haines Borough Public Library is changing its online catalog system in 2021, but patrons are unlikely to notice much of a difference, director Carolyn Goolsby said.

In 2016, Haines joined the Alaska Library Catalog (ALC), a statewide lending system, allowing for easy access to 3.5 million volumes in 87 libraries throughout the state. Patrons place orders through the unified online catalog, and the volumes they order from other libraries are mailed to Haines.

Dean of the UAA/APU Consortium Library Steve Rollins, who runs the ALC, estimates member libraries serve areas that encompass 92% of the state’s population.

In 2021, Haines will be the first library to leave the ALC since it began roughly 10 years ago.

The library is leaving the ALC for a number of reasons, Goolsby said. Primary factors are the desire to save money, customize the library’s catalog system so patrons can more easily access a wider variety of titles and increase access to materials in Haines.

“Before we even started thinking about dollar amounts, the first thing we noticed was how many times things weren’t available to our users because the copy was loaned out,” Goolsby said. “We have seen several instances where a patron places a hold on a title, our copy arrives back, and is immediately tagged by the system to go to another library while our patron (continues to wait) for a copy from out of town.”

Under the ALC, the Haines library tends to loan out more books than it borrows from other libraries.

“Since we went with the ALC, we have borrowed 4,303 items and loaned 13,433,” Goolsby said. This means for every item someone in Haines borrows, the library loans just over three items to other libraries.

The ratio is not surprising since most ALC borrowers live in the Anchorage area. Goolsby said other smaller libraries in the system find themselves shipping a large percentage of ALC loans to Anchorage as well.

Goolsby said she thinks the disparity between borrowing and lending is also related to the quality of Haines’ collection. Libraries track a statistic known as “Dead on Arrival”—items the library orders for its collection that it turns out no one wants to read. Goolsby said a library’s collection is considered good if 10% of books purchased are dead on arrival. In Haines, the rate is 7.4%.

Some library patrons have expressed concern that leaving the ALC will result in a loss of service, but Goolsby said this is not the case. “We wouldn’t do this if it meant losing access for Haines,” she said.

The plan is to switch to a new catalog system in early 2021. The library will spend the last months of 2020 working with a company to set up the new system. Haines will leave the ALC, but it will retain membership in WorldCat, an interlibrary loan system with members spread across the globe and access to roughly 2 billion volumes.

Goolsby said most, if not all, the members of ALC are also part of WorldCat. The main difference for patrons will be a new interface that allows them to simultaneously search the 41,000 volumes in the Haines library and the 2 billion volumes in WorldCat. Before, patrons would have had to search a separate catalog to locate volumes outside the ALC system.

For many libraries in the state, membership in the ALC allows them to save money. Instead of running their own system and paying an annual fee to the software company, they can pay a reduced fee to buy into the consortium’s system annually, Rollins said.

However, Goolsby said leaving the ALC will likely save the Haines Borough money. The shift to the new catalog system is funded almost entirely through grants. Unlike the ALC’s system, the new catalog will be operated using software that has no annual fee.

Goolsby said she expects the change will also reduce postage costs, which average over $3,000 annually under ALC, and staff time spent packing books to loan out. Under the ALC system, if someone places a hold on an item in Haines, the library is obligated to lend it. When a hold is placed through WorldCat, the loaning library has the ability to refuse the request. This will allow the library to ensure popular titles remain available locally, reducing situations in which a Haines resident must place a hold on a volume in another library because the Haines copy has been lent out.

The new catalog will be accompanied by a website redesign. Goolsby said the library will seek user input for the redesign of the catalog and website, and will make tutorials available when the system is live.