If you’re wondering whether we have a book in our collection, it’s now as easy as a few clicks on your home computer/tablet to find out!
Our Church Librarian Dottie Lewis has been hard at work this summer creating a new searchable database for our church library – both the adult and children’s libraries. We now have an updated library web page on our church website, and there is a link to the searchable database on that page.
If you’d like to check out books, we can pull them and have them available for you at the door anytime! Instructions and more information about how to log in to the new database are below.
Instructions + Info for the New Database
Our new online searchable database for the Sue Martin McCabe Library now available for anyone to search. Since all search engines have their “own way to do things,” we thought a few tips on “How To” might help everyone out.
Once you get to the first page, which should be OPALS Home [pale green.] If not, click on that button. What then comes up should look like the strip below:
Below that strip, in the turquoise box that begins with Location, is the safest way to search “All.” Move to the next button. “Anywhere” will search every word in the database and is probably NOT what you want to do. The black arrow in that box is a drop-down menu of choices to search: among which are “author, title, subject” which will make the search easier. Click on one with which you are familiar that pertains to the material you want. Move to third button and type what you know about the media, i.e., almost any part of the title [love, grace, lion, Luke] or author [Lewis, MacDonald] or any topic [dog, cat, Lincoln.] Click Search.
You will now be presented with a pictured list of books which may [or may not] pertain to your wants. Click on any book/media that you want more information about, until you see something of interest. [the “may not” above may be because OPALS search engine apparently has a very different thought process than one would expect. But you may be used to that from other search engines.]
If you wish to “Request” the book/media, please follow the directions below headed by a bookshelf. The “Request” for media requires an ID. Church members are in the database if they have email. You may request a password by contacting mccabekesler@gmail.com. Full name, full address, phone/cell number and/or email are required.
In transferring the database from our previous software to this new web upload, there have been a few differences of opinion on where in certain information should be presented. We are correcting these difficulties as quickly as we can. For instance, materials marked with “REF” are not really available for circulation as may be shown on a search. However, in the Smyth & Helwys Commentary Series, there is a DVD available for circulation.
We are also cleaning up the many subject headings that are listed to make them more consistent with just one source. Currently there are several headings from several sources that have been downloaded from the internet. That probably will not bother the general users, but does rather “jam up” the system. AND this clean up will take a while.
We are sorry for any inconvenience some errors in the web database may cause. We did want to make our materials available to everyone during our stay-at-home pandemic. Who knows how long that may be!
We hope you are looking forward to the exploration of searching our collection. We are looking forward to an adventure with you, helping you search, and sharing with you!