I am very excited about the innovative things happening in my home state and in my home library (but more on the latter, later). In my home state of Victoria, the Local Government Minister Candy Broad recently launched an Australian first innovation entitled “Library Link”.

Library Link when fully functional, will allow users to search all Victorian public library catalogues and place an inter-library loan for any given item, all through the one portal interface. This gives any Victorian resident, access to over 10 million books and other items.

The Library Link project is a statewide extension of the Murray Link project, which has been operating in the north and west of the state for some time. At present the library services of Darebin, Boroondara, Casey and Cardinia are coming on board, with Port Phillip to follow soon and the rest of the state thereafter.

I have seen both sides of portal, having been able to search it as a user would, but also seeing how it operates from the point of our inter-library loans officer. For a first off project, it works pretty well and although my library service is not yet operational on it, with good media exposure we have already had quite a few enquiries about its availability.

Its very exciting as a new tool for librarians and as a new option for library users and it will be very interesting to see how it impacts on our inter-library loan statistics, both for books coming in for our users and for those going out to other libraries.

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