Day started with the AGM which included dates for future meetings:
- EPUG-UKI conference - 1-2 Nov - based on previous SFX/ Metalib day school but will include all products
- EPUG-UKI meetings: 28 or 29 March 2011 and October 2011
Ex Libris update
Mainly updating on new customers e.g. Coventry Uni - Primo; Oxford Uni - Aleph; Sheffield Uni - Verde; Plymouth Uni, Nottingham Uni, Liverpool Uni, Swansea Uni, Cambridge Uni - bX.
Metalib/ SFX strand
- Problems with Full Text / Peer Review Indicator in Metalib - Ex Libris can't provide list of which databases it works with / doesn't work with.
- Knowledgebase working group - working to get NESLI etc to include condition of updating OpenURL providers in licences. Also working on updating existing NESLI targets e.g. Science Direct NESLI target to be added. Will be emailing info about progress and also looking for help with starting on smaller publishers.
- Ex Libris update
SFX 4 - release July 2010. Upgrade docs currently being prepared
Primo Central - Beta testing from end of March, available Q3 2010. Vanderbilt Uni have gone live with it. EL can't publish list of publishers whose content is included but Account Manager should be able to provide details. They will also be able to do a match on your holdings.
URM
Started with general presentation on URM from EL:
- will manage all types of materials & workflows
- customisable using e.g. Open Platform, X-server
- SaaS
- integrate with other parts of institution e.g. finance
- using data where it is e.g. not pulling into system
Building on Rosetta infrastructure (which went live in 2008)
Roadmap:
2010 - complete requirements gathering
Mid 2011 - beta version to beta partners
Mid 2012 - general release although won't have all functionality of all systems
End 2012 - first live systems
Also presentations from members of URM focus groups - looking at specific bits of functionality in their areas e.g. Circulation and Fulfilment group looking at Digitisation workflow from making request through to acquisition, Selection & Acquisition looked at selection tools, usage stats. General opinion is that the groups are working and are feeding into the EL development of URM.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
I know we are using this for reporting back on external events etc but if possible it would be nice to use as a forum for new ideas things we would like to do in the future. They might not come to anything but it might be a nice place to record ideas:-
I was just wondering whether there would be any scope for using comments and rating functionality within reading list software.
Look at customizing the reports within Google Analytics on the LMS
Anna
I was just wondering whether there would be any scope for using comments and rating functionality within reading list software.
Look at customizing the reports within Google Analytics on the LMS
Anna
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Visit to Huddersfield Uni - 28th Feb 2010
Angela and myself took a trip across the Pennines to visit Dave Pattern at the University of Huddersfield. The main purpose of the trip was to look at developments on their OPAC but we also talked Summon and repositories.
Dave's added lots of enhancements to their OPAC (Horizon, Sirsi Dynix):
Keyword search tag cloud - on the front page of the OPAC. Shows most popular search terms - very popular at the start of term.
Keyword suggestions - suggestions of other related keywords to include in your search
Stats available to staff - restricted by IP range staff can see loan statistics for the book they are looking at in the catalogue.
People who borrowed this also borrowed.... - following the introduction of this a bigger range of stock has been borrowed, more books have been borrowed and people are renewing less often
Other editions - uses data from Library Thing
Virtual Shelf browse - most popular feature - let's you browse the shelf (by classmark) from the OPAC
Dave's added lots of enhancements to their OPAC (Horizon, Sirsi Dynix):
Keyword search tag cloud - on the front page of the OPAC. Shows most popular search terms - very popular at the start of term.
Keyword suggestions - suggestions of other related keywords to include in your search
Stats available to staff - restricted by IP range staff can see loan statistics for the book they are looking at in the catalogue.
People who borrowed this also borrowed.... - following the introduction of this a bigger range of stock has been borrowed, more books have been borrowed and people are renewing less often
Other editions - uses data from Library Thing
Virtual Shelf browse - most popular feature - let's you browse the shelf (by classmark) from the OPAC
Primo Central webinar 9th Feb 2010
Quick recap - Primo Central is an index of scholarly material, hosted and managed by Ex Libris which will be free to Metalib customers. It will be released in the Metalib Knowledgebase in Q3 2010 and will contain articles, ebooks and some other e-content and will index the bib data, abstracts and full text.
The webinar showed that there's a large list of publishers signed up - some such as EBSCO will only be available to subscribers (although it wasn't clear exactly how this will be configured).The info should be up to date - the index will be updated daily for most resources but more often where necessary. Some thing which I hadn't realised is that you will be able to see where each result has come from so can link to that database to do a more in depth search.
The main advantage is that search response will be much faster - rather than having to wait for individual databases to send results it will all be comign from one place.
The webinar showed that there's a large list of publishers signed up - some such as EBSCO will only be available to subscribers (although it wasn't clear exactly how this will be configured).The info should be up to date - the index will be updated daily for most resources but more often where necessary. Some thing which I hadn't realised is that you will be able to see where each result has come from so can link to that database to do a more in depth search.
The main advantage is that search response will be much faster - rather than having to wait for individual databases to send results it will all be comign from one place.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Summon Demo
Myself and Angela went to a demo of Summon last week. Whilst Serials Solutions were there, the majority of the presentation was given by Liverpool Uni who gave a fairly 'warts and all' talk about their experience with Summon (which they have been beta testing).
The big difference between Summon (and others like Ebsco Discovery Service) and the other next generation OPACs is that Summon harvests and indexes content so that searching is much quicker, getting rid of the waiting familiar to users of federated search tools. You can search across the catalogue and other sources such as databases from a single search box. Features found in other search and discovery tools were available, such as facets and book jackets.
For electronic resources you can restrict the results only to those resources you subscribe to but also add in results from outside your subscriptions which are contained within the Summon index. You can also link to the full text - rather than being hosted on Summon you use the link resolver to link to the full text.
Feedback from users has been that the system is intuitive and easy to use. However, as it seems to be with every system, Summon isn't perfect. Liverpool highlighted some of the issues they'd come across:
- No de-duplication of results so in the example shown, there were 5 records for one book.
- Results from databases don't show where they've come from so it's not possible for users to find a relevant database and go off and search it in more detail.
- Gaps in the coverage of content - not all databases are indexed (and it's very unlikely they ever will be) but it's not always clear which one's are so you can't tell users exactly what they are searching. There's currently no way to link to a federated search tool to address these gaps.
- Testing has shown that indexing of content isn't always up to date, for example, some journals were a few issues behind so users can't find current articles.
But despite these issues Summon does seem to be a step in the right direction - offering fast searching across (nearly) all our resources from one search box. The interface is clean, attractive and easy to use and using the facets to drill down into the results seems to work smoothly.
Liverpool Uni's Summon can be freely accessed at http://www.liv.ac.uk/Library/e-library/summon.html (although they thought they would put it behind their proxy once they fully released it).
The big difference between Summon (and others like Ebsco Discovery Service) and the other next generation OPACs is that Summon harvests and indexes content so that searching is much quicker, getting rid of the waiting familiar to users of federated search tools. You can search across the catalogue and other sources such as databases from a single search box. Features found in other search and discovery tools were available, such as facets and book jackets.
For electronic resources you can restrict the results only to those resources you subscribe to but also add in results from outside your subscriptions which are contained within the Summon index. You can also link to the full text - rather than being hosted on Summon you use the link resolver to link to the full text.
Feedback from users has been that the system is intuitive and easy to use. However, as it seems to be with every system, Summon isn't perfect. Liverpool highlighted some of the issues they'd come across:
- No de-duplication of results so in the example shown, there were 5 records for one book.
- Results from databases don't show where they've come from so it's not possible for users to find a relevant database and go off and search it in more detail.
- Gaps in the coverage of content - not all databases are indexed (and it's very unlikely they ever will be) but it's not always clear which one's are so you can't tell users exactly what they are searching. There's currently no way to link to a federated search tool to address these gaps.
- Testing has shown that indexing of content isn't always up to date, for example, some journals were a few issues behind so users can't find current articles.
But despite these issues Summon does seem to be a step in the right direction - offering fast searching across (nearly) all our resources from one search box. The interface is clean, attractive and easy to use and using the facets to drill down into the results seems to work smoothly.
Liverpool Uni's Summon can be freely accessed at http://www.liv.ac.uk/Library/e-library/summon.html (although they thought they would put it behind their proxy once they fully released it).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)