HOLLIS Offers New Features

Harvard library employees worked through the summer in a continuing effort to enhance the University's year-old library computer directory system.

In the past month, they have added several new features for the system, including a function that would allow users to locate a book by entering key words from the title or subject heading into the terminals, according to Edward P. Tallent, reference librarian in Lamont Library.

Other new features in the Harvard On-Line Library Information System (HOLLIS) include a call-number search which will make it possible for a user to find books by their Dewey decimal numbers, Tallent said. He said students will also be able to use a "trace" command when looking at a listing, so they can find other books on the same subject.

One of the biggest breakthroughs in the HOLLIS system, the installation of bar-coding to expedite the book check-out process, was introduced in July. But because of a lack of funding, neither Hilles nor Lamont library could finish putting bar codes on its books this summer, as was originally planned, said Heather E. Cole, librarian of both Hilles and Lamont.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last May denied a supplemental budget request for less than $200,000 to hire temporary workers to put bar codes on books in the two libraries, Cole said. Now, bar codes are only put on new books as they come in, and a new budget request will be submitted next spring, Cole said.

Both new and old books are being bar-coded now at Widener library, library workers said.

Down the pike are a number of additional enhancements for the HOLLIS system. The feature that will tell users whether a book is on the shelf is a "very high priority," said Jon Lanham, associate librarian of the Lamont library.

This feature should be functioning by next year, he said.

Other projects include enabling users to access databases, such as journal indices, through the HOLLIS system and to make the system accessible through other University computers.