Online Library Search System for Flood Control District of Maricopa County

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

The Flood Control District of Maricopa County (District) has a mission of reducing flooding risk for 3.8 million residents. The District’s library houses thousands of technical reports and guidelines related to flood control. These documents provide great resources for internal and external engineers. One of the largest library user groups are the local engineering firms which perform engineering analysis in the community and pursue the District’s contracts. However, in the past, library users were required to visit the District to view the documents and make paper copies, which was not cost-effective. Due to a successful completion of an “Online Library Search System” in 2011, the library was greatly modernized. Most of the library documents were scanned into a database as PDF and a quick search tool was developed for an online Intranet search, which cut down the library visits significantly. From 2011 to 2014, the walk-in visits to the library dropped significantly from 135 to 53 visits per year. As of October 2014, all these PDF files are available on the District’s public web site, making the documents even more readily available. The online library search system has greatly improved our library service to the engineering community and the public.