Greetings from the Great Bend Public Library! Today I have an exciting announcement. We have a brand new library catalog for our patrons!

This catalog will allow you to do all the things you could before, like a search for materials and place holds, but now things have been streamlined to make your experience much easier and faster while adding some welcome additions. You can search by format right at the top, so you can find exactly what you’re looking for, be it an audio ebook, movie, or whatever else. Series are now labeled too, making it much easier to find the next title in a series without having to search for it separately.

The catalog can even correct spelling mistakes right on the spot. As an example of some of the features, if you were searching for Harry Potter, and maybe missed typed and searched Hary Pottor, the catalog will actually correct it for you and bring up the search results for Harry Potter. From there you will see at the top the option to select between books, audiobooks, ebooks, music, and movies, related to the search. This way you can quickly select between the Harry Potter books or movies. If you are specifically wanting an audio version, you can see results for only the audio version of the books. Instead of searching for them through all the different books, movies and ebook results.

Now that you have narrowed down your search to Harry Potter audiobooks, say you have just finished listening to the third book and now would like to find book four. However, you are not sure of the title. When looking at the results it will say for example in the title “Harry Potter and the goblet of fire: Harry Potter Series, Book 4.” This makes it easy to find exactly what book you need. Now that you have found the book you’re looking for, you will notice all in the same spot the different formats it’s available in are listed. It will tell you whether or not they are available at Great Bend right now, along with whether they are available on Hoopla or Libby, our digital services. You can place a hold right then and there.

I believe that this new catalog is exceedingly user friendly, and I hope you will all give it a try and see what you think for yourselves. Have a book or movie you are looking for? Take a look at greatbend.catalog.ckls.org.

Summer library program

As a reminder, registration is still open for our children’s and teen’s summer library program. You can find information on how to register on our website, greatbendpl.info. Be sure to register before June 28th to make sure you secure your bag, filled with everything you need to enjoy the program from home. 

For library information or questions, please visit our Facebook page or website greatbendpl.info. You can also message us on Facebook or email at gbcirc@gmail.com.

Hannah Grippin is the outreach and marketing manager for the Great Bend Public Library. She can be reached by email at gbcirc@gmail.com.