[Libs-Or] ChiltonLibrary Database - Yay or Nay

[Jim Jatkevicius]

Hi Matt,

You raise an interesting question (or questions) and I think the answer is somewhat of the "it depends" variety. I'm no gearhead but I've had reasonable success with helping patrons, or trying to educate myself on the occasional decrepit innards of my 1999 Dodge Ram.  I can't say for sure but it seems better than it was several years ago as far as providing robust content for older vehicles. I just did a test of myself as patron in determining how to remove and install a valve cover on my Dodge and the search results were satisfactory, as were the instructions and illustrations describing the process.

I confess to times where I couldn't get Chilton's to yield the desired results for the patron but that could well have been me not thoroughly understanding the vehicle issue as it was being described to me. And, on some occasions, the information may simply not be there. As for printing, sometimes I Chilton's requires you to enlarge separate sections of a page displayed to represent the entire array of information and the attendant images required to understand a procedure, which isn't optimal, but printing the native screen often renders the illustrations, particularly of wiring diagrams, indecipherable.  Even so, I find it reasonably comprehensive and comparable to AllData, the Mitchell's product.

I would enjoy hearing the thoughts of others on this topic.



Jim Jatkevicius, Library Services Supervisor - Reference
Forest Grove City Library
Forest Grove, OR 97116
jimj at wccls.org<mailto:jimj at wccls.org>
503 992-3280


________________________________
From: Libs-Or [libs-or-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us] on behalf of Matthew Baiocchi [mbaiocchi at lincolncity.org]
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2019 4:31 PM
To: libs-or at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
Subject: [Libs-Or] ChiltonLibrary Database - Yay or Nay


Howdy folks,


I'm Matt, the reference librarian at Driftwood Library in Lincoln City.


I've been having very little success  with getting patrons the info they need to work on their vehicles via the ChiltonLibrary database. I'm not sure if it's me and a lack of knowledge in using ChiltonLibrary properly or if the ChiltonLibrary database simply isn't that useful, so I'd be very interested to hear if and how y'all are using it when working with patrons. Do you like it? Do patrons find it useful? Most importantly, are patrons getting what they need from it?


Basically is it a "Matt, you need to get training on this database *right now,* it's simply fantastic" kinda thing or a "Nope, we haven't found it particularly useful either" issue.


As a bit of additional info, if you're interested: We (the patron and I) never have a problem finding their vehicle in the database, ChiltonLibrary seems very comprehensive in the vehicles they include, rather, it's when we are trying to find specific pieces of information that we can't quite dig up the right thing, and when we find something that isn't quite right but might help a little bit anyways and try to print out a picture from the database it's always very low resolution and hardly worth the effort.


Thanks in advance for your time. Hope y'all have a wonderful rest of the day.



Matthew Baiocchi
REFERENCE LIBRARIAN
__

City of Lincoln City  |  Driftwood Public Library
801 SW Hwy 101  |  PO Box 50  |  Lincoln City, OR
P: 541.557.1116  |  E: mbaiocchi at lincolncity.org<mailto:mbaiocchi at lincolncity.org>
W: Driftwoodlib.org | W: LincolnCity.org

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