In August, the Getting it System Toolkit (GIST) was rolled out to Geneseo faculty and staff, giving users new options as they initiated purchase and IDS requests for books and media. On November 7th, GIST was introduced to a national audience at the 29th Annual Charleston Conference, a yearly gathering of acquisitions and collection development librarians, publishers and vendors in Charleston, South Carolina. Milne Library staff (Tim Bowersox, Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher and Mark Sullivan) presented a session entitled, “The Getting It System Toolkit: The GIST of making informed decisions and the workflow of buying, borrowing, downloading or viewing“, a detailed look at how Milne Library is changing the purchase request process by enabling users to make decisions about what the library buys, borrows and accesses. It is all done through the creation of an innovative new tool which places decision-making ability in the patron’s hands, using:
- Automated holdings information checking to see if other libraries within our network own the material
- Purchase price look-up service to compare prices of different book vendors
- The collection of user feedback (should library purchase this item? Is it essential, non-essential,etc.)
- Customizable emails and workflow enhancement for staff behind the scenes
- Reviews and ratings via Amazon and Google APIs to make easy decisions
- Automatically find full-text, online availability and present to users at point of decision-making
See our additional information about how to place purchase requests.
You can request more information about the GIST project and releases of future versions on the IDS Project website.
