Founded 1991 | Location Cape Cod | |
Type Nonprofit organization, Library consortia Area served Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard Members 35 member libraries ; 38 locations | ||
The Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing (CLAMS) library network is a non-profit, cooperative association of thirty-five member libraries and thirty-eight locations located throughout Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. Since founded in 1991, the network has registered over 255,000 cardholders. It completes over 3.5 million transactions per year. The number of items available has grown from 568,000 in 1991 to over 1.6 million in 2014. Deliveries of materials between member libraries and other library networks in Massachusetts through an interlibrary loan program are made by the Massachusetts Library System located in Waltham . The network uses Sierra integrated library system (ILS) for staff function workflows: acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, ILL, and serials as well as for their patron's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). The libraries provide access to reference databases, digital libraries, access to free music online, museum passes, genealogy, workshops, and other free services that vary from each location.
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Digital Services
CLAMS has a page dedicated to free digital media that the libraries offer as well as additional free sources found on the web that include: Project Gutenberg's E-book and audiobook pages, Google Books, the Internet Archive, the Perseus Project, among other resources. This page also offers tutorials for patrons to learn how to browse, check-out, read, and return E-books and audiobooks from different e-book devices.
Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing began a partnership with OverDrive in Spring 2008 to offer patron's 24 hours a day 7 days a week access to a public digital library where they could "check-out" E-book, Audiobook, music and/or video titles through the CLAMS OverDrive website. OverDrive is a distributor of E-books, audiobooks, music, and videos. All of the public libraries participate in the OverDrive lending program. Cape Cod Community College is the only member of the CLAMS network that does not participate however, students from the college are encouraged to obtain a CLAMS card from the library in the town that they live in. All towns on Cape Cod have at least one library that is a member of the Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing network except for the town of Sandwich.
According to the CLAMS OPAC since 2010, "Freegal is a music download web site available by subscription. Music titles are from the Sony Music Entertainment catalog in MP3 formats." Not all libraries have subscriptions to Freegal, only cardholder's from participating libraries have access to this service.
TumbleBooks are interactive E-books for children that are also only available to those cardholder's whose libraries subscribe to the service. The CLAMS record summarizes TumbleBooks as, "animated storybooks which can be played with sound on a computer or read aloud by a child with the sound off. TumbleBooks also offer a variety of games and audiobooks."
The CLAMS library network is a participant in the state's Commonwealth eBook Collections program. The program provides eBooks to Massachusetts library patrons from BiblioLabs, EBL, and Baker & Taylor. "The Commonwealth eBook Collections program is brought to you by the Massachusetts Library System in partnership with the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and your local library, funded, in part, by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services."