StarCat & The STLS Digital Catalog – What’s The Difference?

I had a patron ask me a question this week that I’d never been asked before! She asked me what the difference was between StarCat and The STLS Digital Catalog.

I thought that was an excellent question! That question is one that those of us who work in library land know the answer to; and we know the answer to the question to the extent that it would not ever occur to us to even mention the differences in to patrons in person, on Facebook or on our library tech blog!

So that was an excellent question!

And the answer to the question: “What is the difference between StarCat and the STLS Digital Catalog?” is that StarCat is the catalog of physical library materials and The STLS Digital Catalog is the catalog of digital library materials.

With StarCat, which you can access via the Library Catalog link on our website found at http://ssclibrary.org/, you can:

• Request books or other library materials – so if you want to read the latest Susan Mallery novel or watch the new DVD Lincoln you can place a request (also known as a hold!) – all you need is  your library card number and PIN number (your PIN is initially the last four digits of your telephone number).
• Renew items you have checked out (So you don’t have to run to the library during a very busy day!)
• Access your library check out history (To see if you checked out a specific title before – so you don’
• Simply see what items you currently have checked out
• And see the status of any items you have requested (aka placed on hold)

Here’s a direct link to StarCat if you’d like to check it out!

http://starcat.stls.org/client/default

With the STLS Digital Catalog, which you can also access via our homepage found at http://ssclibrary.org/, you can:

• Check out e-books
• Check out digital audio books
• Check out digital videos
• Check out digital albums
• Request e-books, digital audios, videos and albums
• See what digital items you currently checked out.

And here’s a direct link to The STLS Digital Catalog:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/6D66E60E-4731-4EE4-83EB-17D4BA99B797/10/50/en/Default.htm

So in essence, the difference between the two catalogs is that StarCat is for physical items held in the real world that you must visit the library to check out and The STLS Digital Catalog is for digital materials that you can check out to a computer from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Important Note: You can indeed check out  library e-books, digital audios, videos and albums and download them to a computer. However, with e-books and audio books you can also download titles to a great variety of smartphones and tablets. Basically if you have an Apple or Android app device you can go to your app store and download the OverDrive Media Console app – and then download e-books and MP3 audios through that app and listen to those audios and/or read those e-books on your smartphone or tablet!

If you want to check out a WMA formatted audio – you can do that too! However, you will have to download it to a computer first and then transfer it to an Apple or Android device.

At the present time albums and videos must be listened to or watched on a PC or a handful of portable devices – but may not be watched or listened to on any Android or Apple devices.

If you have questions about which formats in the STLS Digital Catalog can be used to read, listen to and watch titles in the STLS Digital Catalog you can post questions to this blog or check out the OverDrive Device Resources Center found at the following link:

http://www.overdrive.com/drc/

Have a great weekend!

Linda R.