We now have a beta implementation of Summon called the Library One Search: http://lib.asu.edu/one.

On Wednesday, November 11th, we will be adding links to the library web site and MyASU to solicit use and feedback for the service. We will not be marketing this beta release in a viral promotion as originally intended (https://library.sharepoint.asu.edu/libraries/hayden/ics/summon/), but will market the full release heavily in the Spring Semester.

We prefer comments be submitted via the Library One Search Feedback form (http://lib.asu.edu/one/feedback) rather than email. Please feel free to send this out to users to test, but let them know we may be making a few adjustments to the underlying data structure before the Spring.

Thank you.

Tammy Allgood
Web Services Librarian
Informatics and Cyberinfrastructure Services
Arizona State University

Due to popular demand, Diane and I have been working on a new Get it @ ASU script for the SFX menu page. The script will go live this afternoon. Here is the previous discussion about the script. As always, if you find a problem, please report it as it is likely due to data problems in either our knowledge base or our catalog.

A big thank to Diane, for working her Perl magic.

-Tammy Allgood

The links to the local public libraries have been removed from the main catalog search page to make room for some of our media collection links. Please take a look at these new links: http://library.lib.asu.edu/, under the Streaming Media (Audio/Video) heading.

If you used the public library links frequently, we recommend the following alternatives:

1. Bookmark http://www.publiclibraries.com/arizona.htm
2. Google the name of the library

Thank you!

-Tammy

Librarians,

The LibGuides Group is continuing our work overseeing the presentation and organization of these resources, and in a recent meeting we discussed and clarified a few issues we need to share with all LibGuide owners and editors:

Group Guides will now be handled utilizing the new ability to have “Co-Owners” of each guide. The Toolkit on the “LibGuide LibGuide” at http://libguides.asu.edu/content.php?pid=40611&sid=298979 has been updated to include instructions on adding co-owners. Due to technical and staffing restraints, we can no longer provide groups with shared group emails. Groups with existing shared group email accounts will be contacted by Tammy Allgood to aid you in this transition.

There have been questions about copyright and attribution for LibGuides: The copyright for all LibGuides, as with everything we as employees of the university produce, belongs to the Arizona Board of Regents. It is not necessary to attribute authorship beyond the librarian(s) assigned to the guide, and if/when librarians leave the institution, the guides will be utilized by the next librarian assigned to that subject.

Subject classifications and tags designating campuses will be eliminated prior to the start of the fall semester. If you have a guide with only a campus subject classification, please assign it another subject as soon as possible, otherwise, one will be assigned for you.

In the upcoming weeks the LibGuides Group will be drafting a definition of what specific purposes LibGuides are best suited for, and identifying alternative strategies for communicating information that falls outside the parameters of LibGuides usage.

We appreciate all the hard work you have put in over the summer to update and reorganize the guides to benefit our students and faculty.

LibGuides Group:
- Ralph Gabbard (co-chair)
- Jennie Duvernay (co-chair)
- Deborah Abston
- Tammy Allgood
- Lydia LaFaro
- Allison Leaming
- Qian Liu

There have been quite a few questions about the new wording on the “Get it @ ASU” page – in particular, the “may be in the library” phrase. Here’s the history behind that phrasing:

SFX, by default, does not perform a lookup in our catalog to see if we have something in print. By default, it creates a link that simply says, “Check the catalog for holdings” that requires users to click the link and open a new window to check if we have something in print. After a little research, we found a script created by David Walker of Cal State that does an extra check of the holdings and displays whether or not we have a print holding on the “Get it at ASU” menu, “A print/microform copy is available in the library.”

Originally, if the script failed, we used the phrase, “A print/microform copy is NOT available.” However, we found that around 20% of the time (and that is a really rough estimate… out of nowhere, really) the script said we didn’t have something when actually, we did.

After looking at the script in detail, the script is working the way it should, but it requires an ISSN and a year. If that information is not sent, then it determines we don’t have the item. Lately, Google Scholar has not been sending enough citation information (in particular, the ISSN) to the “Get it @ ASU” page. In addition, if someone uses the citation linker and does not include a year, the script says we don’t have a print copy, when in fact, we might.

Because of this, we felt it was more important not to show a false negative than it was for the script to be incorrect. The rather vague wording of “may be in the library” resulted.

Please post if you have comments.

The ASU Libraries are participating in beta testing for an exciting new product from our open linking partner, Ex Libris called bX Recommender.  The bX Recommender is a new service that “taps into the power of the networked scholarly community to generate recommendations based on article usage.” http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview

We will be testing this product for one year. During this year, we will be gathering feedback as to its usefulness and popularity.

In order to implement the product, a new menu was created for our “Get-it-at-ASU” page. This menu is produced in a far more dynamic way than the previous page, which makes editing it far easier than it was in the past. The new menu creation does not allow for some features like header links. I cleaned up some of the style elements and will be conducting user testing to assess the usability and functionality of the revised menu.

The new menu will go live on July 2nd. I am including a screen shot of the new menu.

Get it at ASU

Please comment on this blog post with suggestions or questions about the product and the menu.

Thanks!

Tammy Allgood
Web Services Librarian

Due to the results of usability testing at the end of last semester, I will be implementing some changes to the ASU Libraries home page this Friday afternoon. I apologize for the short notice. I had hoped to get the notice to you much sooner, but simply did not have the time.

You can see a preview of these changes on the development site: http://lib-dev.asu.edu/. Please note, the location library home pages will also change. These are linked off the development site. If you have any questions, or concerns, please let me know. As always, I appreciate feedback. I will also be sending this to the Library Services Council for distribution at their discretion.

Here is a summary of the results of my report:

The following changes were implemented due to the results of this testing:

1. A catalog search box was added to the home page due to the results of the focus group. This was nearly a unanimous request among participants of that discussion. Because there may be some confusion among users who attempt to search for articles within the catalog, a “Find Books & More” header was clearly placed above the search box. “Search Catalog” was also used in the search input button to make it clear that this input should be used to search the catalog.
2. The font sizes were increased within the catalog due to a request from the focus group.
3. Font sizes in IE6 were also increased due to the same request from the focus group.
4. A new, intermediary page was added in the hopes of directing novice users searching for articles to the correct search interface. It was obvious from the usability testing results that users, particularly novice users, were confused by the research database search page (http://library.lib.asu.edu/search/y). They expected to be able to search for articles there. Many of the users simply gave up at this point since they did not find any articles, but were given database results instead. Only 2 of the 8 users tested were successful in finding an article on a topic. Both of the successful participants used one of the “Most Used Resources” links to find an article. The new “Find Articles” page makes an attempt to direct these users. More experienced users can still use the direct, “Research Databases” link to reach the “Research Databases” page. An extra step was not added for all users, just those that follow the “Find Articles” link.
5. Location library addresses were added to the general maps page. This page attempts to collate all the directional information about location libraries.

Additional Changes that were implemented:

1. The images on all the library home pages were adjusted to reflect the new style guidelines recommended by the new ASU Brand ID standards found within the following presentation for branding guidance: http://asu.edu/news/files/ASU_BRAND_ID.pdf.
2. The layout was simplified so that the text is not quite as overwhelming at first glance. The three most important links are emphasized with colored boxes. The background images behind those boxes were replaces by gradient colors to increase text contrast.
3. Statistics to support the most used resources were updated. The list on the home page now reflects these results. The lists of most used resources on the location library home pages are still up to the discretion of the individual library, since we cannot filter statistics based on users’ “home” location library.

Tammy Allgood

Web Services Librarian

This note is from the creators of LibGuides…

“We are pleased to announce two exciting new LibGuides features: 1) Google Scholar content box, and 2) A “linked copy” feature for tabs/pages, enabling users to create a copy of any page in the system (even outside of your LibGuides) – and when the content on the original tab/page is updated, your linked copy of it will be updated as well. You just sit back and relax Thanks to our clients who suggested these new features, I believe everybody in the community will benefit from them. The full feature description is on our support blog at http://support.springshare.com/2008/10/google-scholar-content-box-linked-tabs-feature/

However, more importantly, today we are also introducing the long-awaited *optional* LibGuides module, which was developed based on numerous requests from our client libraries over the past 6 months.  The module has 3 features/functions:

1) The ability to upload images from your computer into LibGuides boxes (using the rich text editor) to be stored on LibGuides servers. The limit will be 2GB per institution, which equates to about 10,000 images – more than enough for all practical purposes of using it in LibGuides. As storage costs decrease, we will also increase the storage limits and pass on the cost savings to you. If you have a need for larger storage for these images, please let us know.

2) The ability for admins to download, on a weekly basis, a complete XML-formatted data file with all your LibGuides content. You can then use this XML file locally to create cool data mashups, to feed the xml file to your enterprise search application/appliance, or … for any purpose you want.

3) The ability for individual guide owners to create text-based backups of their guides and save it on their computer, in html format. Even though we perform daily backups of all our databases, some users would still like to have the ability to create backups of guides on their own computer. This can also come in handy if you accidentally delete a box or a page on your guide – you could easily look up the data and recreate it from you local backup copy.

The detailed description of these functions (including screenshots) can be found at http://support.springshare.com/2008/10/introducing-the-libguides-add-on-module/

Since this optional module will put significant storage and bandwidth requirements on our servers, we are charging a bit extra for this module functionality.  The price is set at $199/year, equating to about $18/month – a bargain by any means. We always strive to provide the lowest cost (and highest service) to our clients and I believe we were able to price this module low enough to enable anybody who wants/needs this functionality to have it in their system.

The module is being released as a “beta” until the end of this calendar year, to give everybody enough time (2+ months) to try out its functionality and decide whether it’s something you want/need for your LibGuides system. We will also use this time to iron out any bugs/issues so if you notice anything please do let us know.

Starting in January 2009 we will start charging (pro-rated amounts, to coincide with your annual license periods) those libraries who wish to keep this module in their LibGuides system.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for using LibGuides, and please continue providing your excellent feedback and ideas for future enhancements.”

Please send me any feedback you have about these new features and I will look into the possibility of buying the additional module.

-Tammy

If you encounter problems with the catalog display, please clear the cache of your browser. 

Here are directions for IE7: https://techbase.asu.edu/wiki/index.php/Clearing_Cache_in_Internet_Explorer_7 

And for Firefox: https://techbase.asu.edu/wiki/index.php/Clearing_Cache_in_Mozilla_Firefox 

Currently, the site search is not working on the new site. We are re-indexing the site and should have the issue resolved soon. I apologize for the inconvenience.

-Tammy Allgood