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Philadelphia, PA The Law Library Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, now known as the Jenkins Law Library, was founded in 1802 by seventy-one Philadelphia attorneys. The library’s original mission was to support the United States’ newly established legal system, preserve the records of the country’s emerging legal history, and promote equal access to justice for all Americans. Today, Jenkins Law Library’s resources are geared toward the practicing bar. Over the last two hundred years, access to Jenkins’ collection has evolved from an eleven-page printed pamphlet to its present Web OPAC (http://jac.jenkinslaw.org), which contains thousands of records. Regardless of location, format, or size, the Web-based catalog continues to be one of the most important tools for the library’s legal researchers. In 1985, Jenkin’s Library Director, Regina Smith, decided it was time to begin automating the catalog. With a grant from the State Library of Pennsylvania, Jenkins became one of the six thousand libraries that joined the OCLC worldwide network. As a result of cataloging the collection on OCLC, the library’s first online catalog—JAC (Jenkins Automated Catalog)—was powered by Innovative and introduced to the public with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday, April 23, 1990. At the time, this was a text-based catalog that could be remotely accessed by dial-up users. From the very start, JAC was heavily used. The first three weeks after the online catalog went live, more than eight thousand searches were conducted with sixteen percent performed off-site. Since the introduction of JAC, there have been several versions, including the current Web interface. According to Katrina Piechnik, Head of Catalog Services at Jenkins, “Using modern technology, our catalog now includes extensive bibliographic records, tables of contents, and hot links to the full text online. It not only gives users access to our physical collection but also links to a wide range of collections that our founders had never dreamed possible!” She added that in 2001, over 96,000 searches were performed on JAC with over half of them done remotely. Today, the library serves more than 9,700 members and its collection includes more than 589,500 volumes in print and micro format with access to many more via the Internet and the library’s Electronic Information Network.
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American Museum of Natural History |
