While we are celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday, the Horton Public Library will be joining the NExpress Shared Catalog, a joint service of the Northeast Kansas Library System and 30 other libraries. Together, these libraries will share access to almost 500,000 items, including books, movies and audio books.
Since 2004, participation in the NExpress automation project has increased from nine to 31 libraries. We are part of a group of seven libraries joining in this fall, which also include Bern Community Library, Eudora Public Library, Osawatomie Public Library, Oskaloosa Public Library, Mary Cotton Library-Sabetha, and Seneca Free Library.
The NExpress Regional Catalog uses Koha, an advanced open-source integrated library system use by thousands of libraries worldwide. Our patrons will be integrated into a shared regional database, which means a patron from any participating NExpress library can request, borrow items from and return items to any other NExpress library. Under this new system, all patrons will be issued a library card.
In preparation for this migration from our current Follett system, we have weeded the collection and modified catalog records. The weeded items as well as donations received over the past year will be offered for sale beginning December 1 in a HUGE SALE in the basement of the library. The sale will be open any time that the library is open. Other preparations include Staff training on the new system, which will be held on Thursday, November 19. On this date, the library will OPEN LATE at 4:00 p.m. Thanksgiving Holiday hours will be as follows: the library will CLOSE EARLY at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 25, and reopen on Monday, November 30. Feel free to stop by the first week of December to obtain your new library card, see the NExpress catalog in action and find out how this exciting new system will work for you!
