LibALERTS: An author-level subscription system

Abstract

Patron requests for the ability to subscribe to their favorite authors so they could receive notifications when new titles are released, presented an opportunity for Westlake Porter Public Library to learn, to build, and to engage with patrons on the development of a new service. The library’s libALERTS service, which launched in June 2012, was the culmination of a process that involved the development of a Drupal-based website augmented with a hand-coded preprocess interface that addressed critical concerns for the effectiveness of the service.