The best reactions to the new Mirlyn online information system may be the comments that librarians never hear.

Implementation of the updated, Web-based library database has gone so smoothly that most people simply began using it without requiring guidance, says Barbara MacAdam, head of reference and instruction for the University Library.

“We made careful plans to provide both online help and assistance to people who stopped by a special table at the Graduate Library,” she says. “On the day we went live in July, we were ready for a deluge. But people walked into the library, sat in front of computers and just started using it.”

Many people who have commented have mentioned that they like the new capabilities of the system, available at http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu. Users like that they can store a search permanently, which saves time for people who look for the same information frequently, MacAdam says.

They also like the direct access to research assistance; Mirlyn’s basket feature for temporarily saving records for printing, exporting and mailing; and the ability of scholars to view records in the native characters of more than 20 languages.

“For a community like the University of Michigan—where we’ve got researchers who do work in Chinese, Japanese and many other languages that don’t use roman characters—being able to support them in their native language is essential,” says Jim Ottaviani, who led the design team on the new Mirlyn. He is head of reference and information services for the Art, Architecture and Engineering Library at the Duderstadt Center.

Some faculty members had difficulty with the transition because they were using an old text-based system. The library staff is working to help them feel comfortable with the new Mirlyn, MacAdam says. People who are familiar with the Web-based searching see the new Mirlyn as intuitive and easy to use.

“Mirlyn is to traditional library catalogs as computers are to slide rules,” says Eric Rabkin, professor of English language and literature. “The interconnection between Mirlyn, which once listed only works themselves, and the deep contents of countless resource collections and databases themselves makes Mirlyn the gateway—the rational, manageable gateway—to the rich universe of published material.”

“I like the look of it, and I think it’s easier to navigate and to see your range of options. You can switch back and forth among databases very smoothly,” says Jana Nidiffer, assistant professor in the School of Education. “Computers are notoriously intolerant of ambiguity, so you have to enter precise data. But Mirlyn is friendlier when you have incomplete information—such as only the first part of an author’s name or an incomplete title.”

Now the library is preparing for the next major improvement. Currently, searches of databases in, say, the humanities, social sciences and other areas must be done separately. The new search capability, scheduled for an experimental implementation during the fall semester, will allow people to search numerous databases at one time.

“Research is cross-disciplinary now, more than ever before. Yet people are used to doing their research in one or two places because different databases use different interfaces,” says Ottaviani, who also is leading the design team on this project. “People want to actually get results, not spend their time learning interfaces. The new product will provide one interface that allows searching many different databases at the same time. It will make doing more thorough searches much easier.”