Improving Library Catalogs

Chronicle of Higher Education
September 28, 2009
"After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software"
http://chronicle.com/article/After-Losing-Users-in/48588/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Donna

Google Scholar

Here's an article from C&RL with the conclusion that Google Scholar is in many ways a better database than traditional library databases.
Title: How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases
Journal Name: College & Research Libraries
Source: College & Research Libraries v. 70 no. 3 (May 2009) p. 227-34

A blog post on the article.

D&D minutes 4/30/09

D&D April 30, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Laura, Scott, Daisy, Lyman, Elizabeth, Donna

1. Proposal from Birdie on TSWG recommendation on merging Dana and BH duplicate bibliographic records in Voyager.
May have ILL implications.
May have implications for order records—bib records are attached to order records.
Is this really a question for D&D?
As far as patron discovery and delivery, this proposal sounds fine with us.
For those records for items that are online, we already have only one record. This proposal only affects records for print materials.
It would be nice if there was only one record for serials that are available in print and online.

2. Invite someone from CTL to D&D
Most of what we talk about (see item #1 above) wouldn’t be very interesting to them.
We’ll be sure to include them in issues where their input would be beneficial.

3. D&D Membership
Should we have rotating membership on D&D to keep the committee fresh and ideas percolating.
If people want to rotate off the committee, let Peter know and he will work with Mara, etc to find a replacement.
We miss Winona and would like someone from that world on this committee, maybe in the fall.

4. Linksource
Dan and Donna were looking at how well Linksource works. Other things came up, but that was the root of it.
Shawn doesn’t think that the reporting functions are much help in evaluating Linksource.
Shawn has been testing linksource over the last week. He’s been taking webinars and courses. A lot of our links aren’t functioning properly. Maybe because EBSCO isn’t updating the linksource links. e.g. change in ingenta link wasn’t updated, California Digital Library doesn’t have a link.
Lyman and Scott have been identifying things that aren’t working in Linksource. e.g. links to IEEE journals don’t seem to work. Lexis Nexis only gets you to the journal, but the stuff they get you to isn’t that helpful. DOAJ journals also only go to the journal level. Gale is also reputed to be difficult.
Sometimes Smartlinks don’t work.
Lyman and Scott will write up their findings over the summer.
Does EBSCO linksource have a declining user base? Are most libraries using SFX or Serials Solutions?

5. Handheld device
Next year’s class will have even more students using mobile devices. Systems needs a handheld to ensure that library databases are optimized for this format. Lyman will have Paul put through an order.

6. Icons in test catalog
See http://voyager.uvm.edu:8080
Peter will write a note to liber and danews announcing this change.

7. OCLC
Worldcat is now pulling item information from local catalogs. If you look at the University of Delaware Library you can see how it works http://www.lib.udel.edu/
Peter is getting this set up for UVM Libraries.

OCLC report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

Selene and Peter pointed us to this Report.

Excerpt:
What do end users want?

• Direct links to online content—text and media formats
• Evaluative content, such as summaries/abstracts, tables of contents and excerpts
• Relevant search results
• Item availability information—if the item is available and how to get it
• Simple keyword search with an advanced, guided search option

Voyager Makeover

Now that the website has stabilized, it's time to start thinking about a voyager makeover. I've put together a potential design using the new colors and logos. This is not a finished product but a request for comments which I'm sending to the Webteam and D&D. I'm out next week but would like to get this project moving when I get back.
http://voyager.uvm.edu:8080/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?clim=1&DB=local&PAGE=hbSearch


Thanks,
Lyman

D&D minutes 4/2/09

Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Selene, Laura, Fran, Scott, Daisy, Lyman, Donna

1. Format icons in Voyager test
They look great. The icons are based on the bib formats in the marc record. Some things though don't really have an image: gov docs, dissertations, generic online stuff. Titles that have both are tricky. Gov docs could be the book image?
Movie, audio, score—add these now
Leave books and journals unmarked until later when maybe we can do some changes in voyager marc records.

Daisy will make some sample Text It and LRA request buttons that look more like each other and not so much like the format icons.

2. Shibboleth
InCommon lists vendors who allow logins through Shibboleth so our users could be authenticated that way instead of VPN or ezproxy. That way the users don't have to come through the library to be authenticated—which is good because so many of them don't go through the library anyway. More secure because people won't be trying to enter their UVM id into username and password boxes where it doesn't belong, revealing their credentials to any non-uvm computer that asks.

3. New website issues
Articles and more part of the new web site is a possible area for usability testing, based on feedback that Selene's gotten from the Comments box.
More tutorials need to be written.
Libguides should refer to databases by the same names that are used in the Articles and more list of databases (and in Voyager as well). And should point to the bib record.
Logos on web site and libguides are the same. Logos on A to Z and linksource are different. Also Voyager. They should all be the same.

4. New site and handheld devices.
Viewing our web site on a handheld could be done using the style guide, but Lyman has no way to test it. He should speak to Peter B. about having the Libraries purchase an iPod Touch so he can test our systems on a handheld device.

D&D blog URL: http://dduvm.blogspot.com

Shibboleth / InCommon

I discovered recently that UVM is a member of a group called InCommon which is working on a framework for managing user identities across institutions. They're using Shibboleth for authorization and access. The following vendors are either members or support InCommon: CSA, OCLC, Elsevier, Ebsco, JSTOR and Safari. There appears to be growing support for this from our e-resource vendors.