Knowledge Access Tool, the Best Way to Promote the Stacks to Students

Knowledge Access Tool, the Best Way to Promote the Stacks to Students
KAT includes images of all your library's stacks, so it's easy to browse the stacks on any smart device just by swiping the screen left or right.

For a dozen years, this shrinking student appreciation of the immense value in their institution's library's print collections has been a big problem that no one wants to talk about. Efforts to ameliorate this problem include brief mentions in freshmen orientation packets and research projects assigned by some faculty members, but the most common and most effective methods used to get the digital generation to try something different is to use lots of visuals. Just as restaurants publish images of their dining areas and their menu items online, with the introduction of KIC Stacks View, libraries can now make images of their stacks and bibliographic records available visually online as well.

The digital age has brought with it many changes, most desirable, some less so. When students enter higher education, they naturally expect far greater sophistication than they experienced in high school. To them, that means that everything that can be digital, should be digital. It is not obvious to them that the great value in the vast print collections in their college libraries is in the content. They probably don't know that it's cost prohibitive to purchase a digital version of every print item. Their appreciation of the library's stacks must be built from scratch, The best starting point... their digital world.

Stack View Screen
Stacks View Screen
Students can view any shelf of your entire print collection with KAT, virtually
Students expect academic libraries to be digital. Their expectations are not about efficiency, effectiveness or cost. They are simply common digital age assumptions.
Stacks View Screen
Search Screen
Search Screen
Use KAT's Library Search screen to find a book by keyword, title or author, then touch to view bibliographic information for any book in the search results.
Shelf View Screen
Shelf View Screen
Zoom from Stacks View to Shelf View and touch to view bibliographic information for any book.
Bibliography View Screen
Bibliography View Screen
KAT reports book availability if supported by your ILS
KAT displays book cover images when available
Faculty Member's Recommended Reading List
Professor: G. Patterson
Professor: G. Patterson
Course ID: QMB4061
Faculty Member's Recommended Reading List
Faculty selects volumes and KAT does the rest.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Promote Your Print Collections as the Key to a More Balanced and a Deeper Education

Search Screen
Search John Beal library
Choose the text that goes on KAT's Search screen and deliver important messages to your student and faculty patrons in context where it makes the most impact and at the moment when they can appreciate it most.

Faculty Book Lists

Get students to habitually see your stacks by publishing
faculty-recommended book lists on KAT.

Professor Patterson distributes the required reading for his course to students electronically. His book selections are in the library and viewable from KAT Stacks View.

Students can verify the location of the books selected and reserve a scanning station in their library to scan excerpts for their course work, all within the KIC Stacks View application.


Students electronically
Professor Patterson
Professor Gordon Patterson
QMB4061 Recommended Reading
Faculty Member's Recommended Reading List

Search Bibliographic Database on Any KIC System

Bibliography View Screen

KAT System

Just about every PC, tablet and smart phone provides access to Google, Wikipedia, etc. Your stacks should be just as accessible!

KIC systems can also be configured with KAT, so even students who don't have a smart phone or tablet can search your stacks from any KIC system your library owns.

KIC & KAT Go Hand-in-Hand

Use the popularity of KIC to promote usage of KAT,
which is turn will improve student awareness of the stacks.

KIC Stations View Screen
KIC Station Reservation Screen
KAT at Samsung phone
Students can scroll through the KIC stations at your library to find the nearest KIC station, or the one that best suits their need. Then a simple touch of the "RESERVE this Scanner" button shows the KIC Station Reservation Screen where the student can select the desired reservation day and time.

How DLSG Captures Your Library's Stacks View

CAPTURE SHELF IMAGES
We use a multi-camera digitization system on wheels to capture individual, high resolution images of each shelf in your library.
CAPTURE SHELF IMAGES
CLIP SHELF IMAGES
Images are all clipped to exactly frame one shelf.
CLIP SHELF IMAGES
ZONE BOOK SPINES
The book's spines are automatically zoned so that they can be individually selected and their bibliographic data viewed, and so that they can be individually extracted and built into virtual bookshelves of faculty reading lists.
ZONE BOOK SPINES
OCR BOOK SPINES
The bibliography records' IDs are located and the text extracted and corrected for virtually 100% accuracy.
RETRIEVE MARC 21 DATA
The library provides its bibliographic data in MARC21 format.
RETRIEVE MARC 21 DATA
ALTERNATE SPINE IMAGE
For MARC21 records without a matching book spine, KAT creates a "CGI" image of the spine and inserts it into the bookshelf.
ALTERNATE SPINE IMAGE
UPLOAD TO CLOUD
All this book shelf imagery is uploaded to KAT servers in the cloud for fast access.
Book covers are uploaded.
UPLOAD TO CLOUD

Are you library's print collections
getting enough use to justify their cost?

The cost of books and journals certainly hasn't fallen in the past 20 years, and it is likely that the majority of their content remains unavailable on the web, yet students typically don't know this important fact about your print collections.

Before you move too many volumes offsite, let KAT Stacks View help promote increased use of your print collections.

Browse Stacks on KAT

KAT Equipment Requirements

KAT is Cloud-based, so no servers or other onsite computers are necessary. KAT can be accessed by any PC, tablet or smart device that has access to the Web.

KAT powered by Azure

Microsoft Azure
Total Up-Time: 99.9936%
Total Number of Servers: 11,000,000

When a WiFi-connected smartphone is used in the stacks to provide assistance in locating materials, to get instant access to bibliographic records, to search for related materials once a volume has been found, and to locate a KIC system for digitizing content, the WiFi bandwidth used will typically be in short bursts of one megabyte per second.

KAT Activity Average Download Bytes per Scan Recommended Min. WiFi Bandwidth
KIC Reservation Screens 0.2 megabytes 0.2 megabytes per second, intermittent
KAT Search Screen & Bibliographic Screens 0.1 megabytes 0.1 megabytes per second, intermittent
KAT Stacks View & KAT Shelf View 1.0 megabytes 1 megabyte per second, intermittent

Considering moving a large portion
of your collections off-Site?

Most libraries have a lot of volumes that haven't been checked out in a long time, and libraries certainly can increase their relevance in the digital age by adding collaboration and study spaces.So it is rather compelling to cull books from the library.

The main argument against culling/moving books off-site is the unknown, but potentially great value that your unabridged collection can have in inciting the very uncommon, but equally special epiphany that a researcher can have while browsing the stacks and perusing the very books that are targeted for culling. The current head of the IMF in Beijing and professor of economics at Harvard University, choose to study

economics at Harvard because of its immense collection of books on economics. It's a difficult argument to ignore. However, relevance in the digital age is not easily pursued without compromises.

If your need to repurpose a lot of stacks space outweighs the value of keeping your full collection browsable, then before you proceed with the culling, let DLSG photograph your entire collection as it is today and make it browsable with KAT stacks view. Students abd researchers can browse your complete collection virtually, instantly see any book's bibliography by touching its spine, and with another touch, read books that have been digitized.

To Cull, or Not to Cull

Searching on the bookshelf with KAT
Dreaming woman