USC Health Sciences Libraries and Dynix: Eliminating Barriers Easily, Reliably

When you're serving 1,000 health sciences students, 1,500 faculty, and hundreds of clinical staff members at leading hospitals throughout the Los Angeles area, choosing an information management system that is reliable and easy to use is critical. "We needed a system that basically ran itself," says David Morse, associate director at the University of Southern California (USC) Health Sciences Libraries—a system that "didn't require local customized programming and [that] was stable enough that we could sleep at night."

The USC Health Sciences Libraries found that among five competitors, Horizon offered the best combination of features, flexibility, standards compliance, and value. "We were especially impressed with the degree to which system parameters were table-driven," says Morse, which allowed "maximum leeway in accommodating the needs of our diverse user population."

Horizon also helps staff members of the USC Health Sciences Libraries efficiently make available current information for faculty and students. "Horizon helps us in a variety of ways to acquire, catalog, and provide access to necessary information sources," says Morse. The positive effect of Horizon on the libraries' workflows enables librarians to process acquisitions and make new items available for loan in less than a day.

Like many medical libraries, the USC Health Sciences Libraries' collection includes an unusually high number of journals, a crucial resource for biomedical research. Together, the libraries receive more than 2,500 physical journals and enable access to 1,000 electronic serials. For managing physical and electronic serials, Horizon provides several sophisticated features, including a prediction feature, which the USC Health Sciences Libraries find "especially valuable."

Patrons of the USC Health Sciences Libraries appreciate Horizon's web-based catalog, which enables them to link to electronic journals and place holds on books from their home computers. But "truthfully," Morse admits, "we don't hear much about the system from our users, [and this] is fine with us. The system isn't there to be impressive; it's there to do a job. Physicians and medical students don't really have much interest in a lot of bells and whistles. They generally know what they want, and they think it's our job to eliminate any barriers that may be standing in their way. That's what Horizon helps us do." Dynix is excited to be partnered with academic libraries to embrace the challenges of educating in the digital age.

For more Dynix Success Stories, go to http://www.dynixstories.com.