How well do you know . . . New Summit Borrowing?

Using Summit is a great way to find resources that are not owned by the SPU Library but can be requested from another library in Washington or Oregon. Materials requested through Summit usually take about 3 business days to get to SPU.

You may have noticed that Summit recently underwent some changes. We've put together some information that will help you navigate the new Summit system.

Basic Summit Searching:

http://screencast.com/t/locvH3lwY

Click the link above to view a 3:29 minute screencast video that shows the basics of Summit searching including limiting your search, logging in, and requesting one part of a multivolume set.

Advanced Summit Searching

http://myhome.spu.edu/sperisho/SummitAdvanced.pdf

Click the link above to download a PDF document showing some advanced search tips such as limiting your search term to a specific field such as the title or author.

Software Development

The Orbis Cascade Alliance, the consortium of libraries that share materials through Summit, has been working closely with OCLC, the software developers, to help make Summit Borrowing the best product of its kind.

OCLC is working from user feedback to make the system searchable without much instruction needed (ready to go, more like Google) while the Alliance is gathering information from the libraries to make sure that the product still has the power that our super users have come to rely on.

As a result of both of these initiatives, there will be small upgrades to the system on April 19th and again in Mid-May.

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions about Summit that we can pass on to OCLC or the Alliance by sending an e-mail to LibWeb@spu.edu

Thank you for joining us to celebrate National Library Week 2009.