Fallon library marks 25 years in state system

FALLON - Film rolled and lights were ablaze at the Churchill County Library as director Barbara Mathews was interviewed about the 25th anniversary of the CLAN consortium of Nevada libraries.

CLAN is an acronym that used to stand for Carson Library Automated Network, but now stands for Cooperative Library Automated Network. Library patrons will recognize the acronym, which appears on book-checkout cards.

Filmmaker/producer Gwen Clancy, along with assistant Sandy Rizzo, interviewed Mathews this month for a documentary to be produced for the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs about the consortium.

Mathews was chosen to be interviewed because she's the only remaining librarian who was present at CLAN's 1981 inception. She has seen it evolve from a small group of five Northern Nevada libraries to its current presence in all 17 state counties.

Mathews said former Churchill County head librarian Dora Witt saw the need for automated services, like computerized checking-in and -out of books, at rural libraries after Washoe and Clark county libraries entered the electronic age. Mathews said Witt, assisted by the Douglas County and Carson City librarians, realized their libraries could assist each other in automating by pooling resources.

Mathews said the Library Services and Construction Act provided the seed money to start the CLAN system. Servers and computers were purchased in 1981, and over the next three years, a comprehensive list of the local library's books was compiled.

Mathews said library worker Sylvia Tamblyn spent countless hours comparing book titles to microfilm information and typing up a long information sheet. The date was sent off to a company that retyped the information into a database. Mathews said the books were then all issued a bar code, and after the database was loaded onto the computers, the books' bar codes and database were matched up.

"It was fun," Mathews said. "It was like learning a computer program."

She said it was a challenge finding the right key words, author or book number to match up the book and the computer. She said the library matched up more than 20,000 books before it "went live" on Feb. 23, 1984.

The library has come a long way from handwritten due-date slips and now offers much more than just books. Patrons can access their library account online and renew books, search inventory, and even request book holds from their home computer.

The CLAN Web site - www.clan.lib.nv.us - offers many tools for patrons, including children's book searches, auto repair reference manuals and several online databases. The Churchill County Library's Web site, accessed through a link at the above Web address, has additional databases. It also features a section with practice tests covering middle school and high school subjects, college-entrance exams and several professional-development tests like cosmetology, law enforcement, nursing, real estate and U.S. citizenship, all of which can be completed privately as practice tests.

"You're getting more bang for your buck than for any other tax you're paying," Mathews said. "CLAN represents what is best about what a library can do. This is a resource that the state should be extremely proud of."