Reserve materials earlier with WPPL's new LibALERTS service

Now Westlake Porter Public Library cardholders can get holds placed on new books by their favorite authors sooner. The library has introduced a service called LibALERTS that notifies library users when the library has ordered a new book by their favorite author(s).

Users can register for LibALERTS at www.westlakelibrary.org/libalerts/ and select the author(s) they wish to receive notifications about. Notifications are sent to users’ e-mail accounts or cell phones, and contain links users can follow to the catalog to place holds. (The system does not automatically place a hold on the title.) There is a mobile version of the service which allows users to access it via their cell phones.

LibALERTS grew out of library users’ requests for a way to find out when their favorite authors release new books. Rather than look for a vendor to provide such a service, Porter's web librarian Matt Weaver developed LibALERTS himself using Drupal, the open source software the library’s other sites are built on, augmented with some custom code for processing the records that create the notifications. While developing the program, he decided to go one better by setting it up to notify patrons when we order new books so that they may get holds placed sooner.

Anyone who opts to receive alerts on their cell phone via text message should be aware that message and data rates for your cellular carrier apply. Due to restrictions from the library’s carrier for text messages, LibALERTS users can receive a maximum of five alerts per month via text message, so voracious readers should consider receiving their notifications via e-mail.

Authors included in the services represent a variety of genres, both fiction and non-fiction, and include popular, best-selling luminaries like John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Stephen King and Janet Evanovich. LibALERTS also includes young adult and children's authors. If users don’t find a particular author, they can submit it to the site and a staff member will attach a subscription to the user’s account.

For more information about this service, including video tutorials, go to the “How it Works” page at www.westlakelibrary.org/libalerts/?q=howitworks.