Tip of the Week

Tip for: 12.09.02

WAN

As we look for new ways to share resources within a group of libraries, one of the most helpful is the WAN add-on to Alexandria. WAN stands for Wide Area Network and allows librarians to make catalogs accessible within a district or a group of libraries close together. This makes accessing resources at other libraries a lot easier.

By setting up different groups using the Address Book preference, patrons can search a particular group of libraries at the same time. For example, if I am part of a district that has WAN and I have placed all of the elementary libraries in the same group in my preferences, using the Boolean search I can search all of them at the same time for the item or topic I am looking for. When I receive the results of my search it will indicate how many results I got from each library and I can then select which results to look at more closely.

To set up an address book:

Go to Edit, and select Preferences.

Click on the Address Books tab on the Administration preferences window.

To add a new group, highlight the book to add the group to. Then, click on the New button at the bottom left of the window. A smaller window will appear allowing you to create a new book or add a group to the highlighted book. Type in the name of the group to add (i.e. Elementary Libraries). Then, click the New button at the bottom right of the window.

To add a library to a group or book, highlight the group or book to add the library to. Click on the Specify IP button. Enter the IP address of the data station for the library in the IP Address field. In the Friendly Name field, enter the name of the library. If adding more than one address click on the Keep window open after adding check box. Then, click Add.

To use the books and groups in the Search window:

Select Search from the Show drop-down menu.

Click on the Boolean search tab.

Use the drop-down menu at the top left side of the window to select the group or single library to search.

Enter your search criteria as usual.

A window will come up showing the different libraries that are being searched and will show the status and results from each.

Double click on the name of the library to see the results list from that library.

The WAN add-on can make it easier to share resources between libraries in the same district or area. It is how Alexandria creates a Distributed Union Catalog for a group of libraries. It adds the benefits of Central Union without many of the disadvantages.

We hope this has helped give a better understand of how WAN is used and how to set it up.

Thank You
The Alexandria Staff Librarians