By Sylvia MacKinnon
During the weekend of February 11-12, 2006, the library collection of Dickinson Law School was added to The CAT, PSU Libraries' online catalog. This was the result of months of planning and teamwork among colleagues at Dickinson's Sheely-Lee Law Library, the University Libraries, and Digital Library Technologies (DLT). Now, when you visit The CAT, you’ll find Dickinson School of Law prominently featured among the many searchable libraries.
Dickinson data was migrated from Dickinson's former library system, called Innovative Interfaces, to Sirsi Unicorn, the University Libraries' commercial library system. Dickinson's library collection consists of 76,000+ bibliographic titles, plus 270,000+ individual items associated with these titles. In law libraries such as Dickinson's, it is not unusual to have many items (volumes) associated with an individual title. For instance, the title United States Code Annotated has 2108 items attached, and The Federal Reporter, 2nd Series, has 2548 items attached. While it is comforting to know that Dickinson's collection is robust, it did present a unique set of migration challenges. In addition to the catalog data, the Dickinson collection consists of 5,400+ serials control records for managing journals.
In The CAT, you can search the Dickinson School of Law collection individually, or as part of the entire CAT holdings. Holdings statements will indicate Dickinson School of Law - Carlisle or Dickinson School of Law - University Park. Temporarily, you cannot place holds (I Want It) at either School of Law locations, pending full implementation of their circulation processes later this year. In the meantime, you should ask at a library service desk if such materials are needed for a class.
