LINK+ online catalog for more than 70 libraries

Sonoma County Library customers now have a single connecting database that grants them access to the collections of all participating libraries. The LINK+ database is now available to Sonoma County Library cardholders. It’s a catalog of materials from more than 70 participating libraries in California and Nevada.

Who remembers “SuperSearch” that connected several North Bay libraries? I regularly sought items through these libraries’ combined resources until the database went down in 2012.

With that past reliance, I’ve long appreciated cooperative lending among partnering libraries — it greatly expands what each library can offer to their respective customers.

The LINK+ catalog gives patrons access to more than 9 million titles — Books, DVDs, CDs, and videos — from academic, public, and special libraries. You can place requests directly, no forms required, from a single online catalog. To access these resources, you need only log-in with your Sonoma County Library card.

SuperSearch interlibrary loan database is down

Image source: Sonoma County Library

The Sonoma County Library posted a notice last week that the SuperSearch online database connecting North Bay libraries has failed.

Readers still have access to our three-county shared catalog between Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma County libraries. However SuperSearch facilitated borrowing of materials among other library systems around the North Bay.

Sonoma County Library indicated it hoped to have a replacement system in place soon but did not have an estimate yet on when it would be available.

Published Feb. 7, 2012 in the Lake County Record-Bee

Interlibrary loan information and request form for Lake County Library

Interlibrary loan expands resources

As a patron of Lake County Library, I have the combined catalogs of Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma counties available to me. Lake County is additionally part of the North Bay Cooperative Library System, which allows me access to the holdings of Napa, Solano and Marin county libraries. Public and community college libraries alike are represented by the cooperative.

Public library service boundaries becoming blurred

“Public libraries serve a wider range of needs and objectives than most other libraries” (42)

— Libraries in the Information Age
by Denise K. Fourie and David R. Dowell

It's certainly true that, unlike school and academic libraries, which served me only for as long as I maintained an affiliation with the school in question, I have relied upon public libraries for my entire life.