Fraser Health Library Launches Resource Rich Site

Fraser Health, with its 13 hospitals and 5 main and 8 smaller library locations, is one of the largest Authorities in British Columbia in terms of population served and health and medical resources collectively held.  The web-interface for the library catalogue, which has been hosted by Andornot since 1999, has just been recently completely revamped. 

The new site, at http://library.fraserhealth.ca, uses the Umbraco content management system, allowing authorized library staff from any location to quickly add and change content on the site.  The new catalogue interface features quick and advanced search pages as well as an RSS feed for recent acquisitions on the Quick Search page.  Fraser Health staff can search the catalogue, add selected items to an ordering cart and send in a request for delivery to their nearest hospital library location. 

One of the fabulous new features of the site is the Subject Guides.  Fraser Health Librarian Niki Baumann coordinates this area and has moved all the information from individual BlogSpot websites.  She has completely revamped the interface to this resource rich area of the website by dividing each Subject Guide topic into What’s New, Journals, Books, Databases and Websites and has used the catalogue’s permalink feature to link from the featured new books to the actual record in the catalogue.  The pages are kept constantly up-to-date with embedded RSS feed headlines from various journal websites, with the links to the titles available directly by IP address authentication if within the hospital locations or via a user name and password from outside the hospital.   These resources are now readily accessible to all Fraser Health professionals, from their offices, their homes or on the road. 

During the launch of the site the library staff encouraged users to “play” with the new site and designed a series of questions requiring users to search the catalogue database in order to find the answers.  Once the survey was completed, the user’s name was entered into a draw for a 4GB USB Drive.

“Staff are thrilled with the new catalogue and web site.  We all feel like proud parents who have collectively given birth to a beautiful new child.  The catalogue includes additional special features that allow the user to search for items by format or site with ease.  The site is more streamlined and cleaner, yet offers more content." comments Linda Howard, Interim Library Manager.