Emeryville, CA—Innovative Interfaces announced today that it will begin to offer Baker & Taylor's Content Café to its growing customer base. Available to Millennium libraries, this add-on service will offer patrons enhanced and continually updated bibliographic information, delivered seamlessly through the library's OPAC while minimizing staff time and expense.
Content Café provides access to an extensive database of enriched bibliographic information. With almost 1.5 million jacket art images, tables of contents, and full text reviews from key sources, Content Café is the most comprehensive database of its kind. It provides book reviews from ten major sources including Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal. In addition to reviews, the service provides summaries, cover images, item details, and purchase availability. Libraries also have access to jacket images for non-book media such as CDs, DVDs, and e-books. By using Innovative's WebBridge, patrons will be able to view specific information on items such as hardcover, paperback, audio book, or large print through the subscribing library's OPAC. Millennium also supports access to this content for the benefit of cataloging and acquisitions staff.
New subscriber Metropolitan Library System (MLS), in northeast Illinois, added Content Café to its OPAC several months ago. "The jackets and reviews have proven very popular with the staff and patrons in the 77 libraries we serve," says Tony Siciliano, Database Manager at MLS. "The jackets provide an attractive element to an online catalog search and make our large and rich collections even more enticing to our users. Reviews are a helpful tool for staff and patrons alike in evaluating interest in or value of a host of titles. We are very pleased with these important enhancements to our catalog."
Content Café scans books as soon as they are received (approximately one month before the "street date") meaning that data are available as soon as library staff are ready for them. The information is not only timely but also accurate since it comes directly from the database that feeds Baker & Taylor's highly regarded book business. Library staff also have easy access to usage statistics of Content Café titles by providing an ASCII file of ISBN numbers to Baker & Taylor.
"Content Café customers benefit from the breadth, timeliness, and accuracy of our library data as well as our stable 175-year track record as the preferred materials provider to libraries," says Eric Throndson, Manager, Third Party Systems Integration at Baker & Taylor. The company is in the process of adding searchable entertainment annotations as well as author profiles and excerpts to the service in the near feature.
About Baker & Taylor
Baker & Taylor, Inc. (www.btol.com) is a global information and entertainment services company that offers books, videos, music, games and services to libraries, educational institutions, retailers, and Internet retailers. Based in Charlotte, N.C., the company has been in existence for over 176 years, developing long-term relationships with major suppliers, including book publishers, movie studios, and music labels. Baker & Taylor maintains one of the largest combined in-stock book, video and music inventories in the United States, and services the broadest customer base in the industry. Baker & Taylor is majority owned by Willis Stein & Partners, a leading private equity investment firm specializing in investments in profitable, well-managed, and growing businesses targeting the consumer products and services, media, business services, manufacturing, and health care industries.
About Innovative
Celebrating 25 years of partnership with the library community, Innovative Interfaces (www.iii.com) is the leader in providing Web-powered, Java-based integrated library management systems. Its flagship product offering, Millennium, is installed in thousands of libraries in 42 countries around the world. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
