The library of this Sydney law firm services the information needs of 39 partners and over 130 professionals. Profiler is being used to provide automatic current awareness ans loan reminder email alerts to users.

Henry Davis York implements Trimagic Profiler to enhance library services

Henry Davis York (HDY) is a Sydney law firm and has been a Trimagic client for over 15 years. The library services the information needs of 39 partners and over 130 professionals. They are constantly searching for ways to improve services through effective use of technology.

Profiler is designed to provide automatic current awareness and loan reminder email alerts to users. Each profile determines who gets what information, then the system runs completely automatically.

Catherine Bollen, Library Manager at HDY, and the Library staff have built over 350 profiles for the firm’s lawyers.  Half of these are overdues.  If a staff member has overdue items, they get a regular reminder notice until they either return or renew the item.

The remainder of the profiles are for serial current awareness. HDY use Trimagic's TIMS to manage their library system, and part of this is an issues and parts database for serial issues. A record is created for each issue of a serial when it arrives. Where a PDF of the contents page or bulletin is available, this image can be linked to the record.

A journal profile has been created for every lawyer, comprising a serial list search according to each individual's information needs. Every night at 11pm, Trimagic Profiler wakes up, searches the database for the serial issues that arrived the previous day, and automatically constructs emails. Each email contains a list of any serials on the  individual's list of preferences that have been received, with the issue details, plus a link to the scanned table of contents. Every morning (or weekly if they prefer) users are alerted to the arrival of the latest issues of their own private list of preferred serials, and can link immediately to the table of contents.

Now that the profiles have been set up, the system works entirely automatically.

Catherine says:

“The lawyers and Library staff all think our new current awareness system is fabulous. We used to distribute the information via email, constructing separate messages for each issue received and of course this took a large amount of Library staff time. The lawyers really appreciate the efficiency of getting one list that tells them everything, rather than lots of intermittent messages, and they come back to the Library to borrow only the issues they need.

With the loan reminder messages, borrowed items are returning more regularly, we don't have to chase people up and the number of missing books has really decreased.

We have time to do lots of other things now.

We plan to use Profiler next to provide a catalogue update service, so lawyers can keep up to date with new books added to the collection that match their areas of interest.”

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