Tower Topics ~ Winter 2002

Library goes high-tech with MOBIUS
Database gives CSC timely access to 16 million books statewide

A Conception Seminary College student will soon be able to choose a book from almost any academic library in the state without leaving his dorm room.

A two year project nearing completion will bring Conception to the cutting edge of library services.

Gone will be the old-fashioned card-catalog, replaced by a digital catalog and a computer automated system, which will give seminarians, and faculty and staff members, instant online access to the library’s 100,000 volumes.

In addition, Conception’s library will now be linked with the state-funded Missouri Bibliography Information User System (MOBIUS), which gains Conception patrons access to 16 million library items state wide. And improving on the traditional inter-library loan system, the new system will deliver the book within two days instead of two weeks.

Library director Brother Thomas Sullivan said the new emphasis in the high-tech library world is “no longer on possession of items, but on access to information.”

Assistant Librarian Chris Brite, a 1995 graduate of Conception Seminary College who was hired primarily to spearhead the MOBIUS project, has spent the past two years converting the catalog information on each individual item in the library from a card to the new automated system. He then attached computer bar codes to each book to keep track of it in the MOBIUS system. But his work doesn’t stop there. Once the project is finished (it’s about 75 percent completed) there will be the substantial job of managing the books that will be flowing in and out of Conception from all over the state.

“We are an educational institution and we want to be able to offer our patrons as much information as possible with the limited budget we have,” he said.

MOBIUS is a substantial investment for the seminary. It costs $38,000 to join and pay for software, and there is a $10,000 annual fee. But Brite points out that Conception’s relatively small and specialized library is greatly expanded by access to other schools, especially such massive libraries as the University of Missouri, which has 4 million books. And, as he points out in comparison, the cost of subscriptions for the 250 magazines and journals offered in the library reading room alone is $12,000 a year.

Despite the cost, Conception Seminary College’s administration hasn’t blinked.

“Every college is dependent on a good library to accomplish its mission,” said Father Benedict Neenan, president-rector, “and this is equally true of a seminary and probably more true of a monastery.” He added that keeping up with the rapidly improving technology in the library field required connecting with larger collections.

“We are a liberal arts college, but we only have so much money in our budget,” Brite explained. “And most of that money has to go to our priorities – philosophy, theology and religion. This offers our students more access to subjects we don’t specialize in, such as sociology, languages and science and technology.”

Conception isn’t strictly on the receiving end of the consortium of libraries.

“We probably add more to this system than some larger schools because we are so specialized,” Brite said. “They have to buy a wider variety of items to serve many more students and majors, whereas very few schools are buying the books we buy.”

Conception is linked to MOBIUS with a “cluster” of schools, including Northwest Missouri State University, Missouri Western State College, and North Central Missouri College, drawing on the towers prominent on each campus. In cyberspace, the four schools act as one library.

For more on MOBIUS, see the Web site at www.mco.mobius.missouri.edu.

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