Hi Gill,
Thanks very much for the comments. See answers to your questions below -
hope they're of interest to the list as well.
Jan Lavelle
Senior Librarian (Systems Development)
State Library of Tasmania
91 Murray Street, Hobart 7000
Phone: 03 6233 4956
Fax: 03 6231 0927
Email : Jan.Lavelle@education.tas.gov.au http://www.service.tas.gov.au
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: Hamilton, Gill [mailto:G.Hamilton_at_nls.uk]
Sent: Thursday, 12 July 2007 6:02 PM
To: Lavelle, Jan
Subject: FW: Congratulations!: [NGC4LIB] Faceted catalogue in Australia
-----Original Message-----
From: Hamilton, Gill
Sent: 12 July 2007 09:00
To: 'Next generation catalogs for libraries'
Subject: Congratulations!: [NGC4LIB] Faceted catalogue in Australia
Hi Jan
I'm Gill, Systems Librarian at the National Library of Scotland. I was
interested to see and play with your new catalogue - it's very clean,
clear and easy to navigate. Congratulations! Here at NLS we are just
commencing a project to explore resource discovery solutions and one
area we were going to look at was how to make the searching more
intuitive / easier for our customers just like you have done. I have a
few questions for you if you have time:
1. What is the underlying software that you are using for your new
catalogue ?
**We're using the Verity K2 search engine, which includes facet
functionality. It has been quite difficult for us to get it working, and
although it now works well, I think our development time was probably
significantly longer than it would have been if we'd used something like
Endeca or Solr. I also think we're probably the only library using this
software - never a good position to be in...
2. Is your catalogue data harvested or is the searching being undertaken
on the live version ? If it's a harvested version how often do you
update your data ? If it's harvested how do you address the issue of
copy information being out of date.
**We harvest our data from our ILMS nightly - we have processes in place
to identify added/changed/deleted records and these are the only ones
exported and converted into Verity format nightly. We occasionally do a
full build if required eg large number of data changes or records out of
synch for some reason.
**On the initial results screen we only show 'general' copy information
ie number of lending and reference copies, not the live status. We
acknowledge this could be slightly out of date, but feel it is still
worth showing at this point. When you get into the full record, the copy
status is live - a query has been sent into the ILMS to retrieve that
information.
3. When your customers place a reservation does the "look and feel" of
the system persist (I've seen some catalogues where you are dropped back
in to the native interface of the traditional OPAC)
**Yes, the look-and-feel persists. This was our most difficult
development area and we did repeated usability testing to try and
improve it. In the end, we went with a screen scraping solution, where
we collect information from the customer and invisibly send it through
to the backend system and complete the reservation process for them. In
a couple of places we still have to send the customer through to the old
system eg to renew items, but the screens have been configured to look
like the new system as much as possible, and they are shown only the
renewal screens and have no options to go anywhere but back into the new
catalogue.
4. How did you engage your customers for feedback and comments as you
developed the system ? Questionnaires ? Usability labs ?
**We started by collecting ideas with a staff survey about desirable
OPAC features, and also did a review of worldwide ideas in this area
from blogs, listserves etc. Then as we got to the design stage we went
on to testing with customers in our usability lab (which we repeated
throughout the development process). Then a phased release, where we
initially asked 'friendly' customers from libraries around the state to
have a look at the development version and give us their comments. Then
we placed a 'Try our test catalogue' link on the State Library home page
asking for feedback. We finally moved a 'new OPAC' link up into a more
prominent place on the home page this week. We are keeping a fairly
prominent Feedback link on the catalogue home page and have had a very
good volume of feedback throughout, with lots of interesting ideas for
additional functionality. We have one further stage to go, and that's to
offer the new version as an alternative option on the old OPAC login
screen.
5. Do you plan to integrate other datasets in to this new catalogue
(e.g. digital image databases, other catalogues etc) 6. Do you have any
plans for future development ? Or maybe you are taking a well deserved
rest! :-)
**Yes, we do have plans to integrate other data sets into the new
catalogue, and are in the planning stages now. It will be quite a
challenge we feel, as the metadata in some of the sets is quite
different, restricting our ability to provide facets across all the
sets.
**We're also in the process of developing an online "Virtual Library",
with equivalent status to a branch library. This will be much more
task-oriented than our current website and will be based around concepts
like Read and relax, Research and study, Tasmanian heritage etc. The new
catalogue will be an integral part of this Virtual Library and will
offer appropriately scoped search, browse and dataset options in each
area. It's another huge project and it doesn't look like we'll be
getting any rest in the foreseeable future!!!!
All the best
Jan
Very best wishes from the other side of the world :-) Gill
---------------------------------------------------
Gill Hamilton
Systems Librarian
National Library of Scotland
George IV Bridge
Edinburgh EH1 1EW
Scotland, UK
e: g.hamilton_at_nls.uk
t: +44 (0)131-623 3774 (desk)
t: +44 (0)7795 456348 (mobile)
w: http://www.nls.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Lavelle, Jan
Sent: 12 July 2007 01:38
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Faceted catalogue in Australia
The State Library of Tasmania has just gone fully live with our new
faceted catalogue, based on the Verity search engine. It's been quite a
long road(!), but it's finally in production. Our main issue has been
ensuring that the source catalogue data is of consistent quality to
produce clean and effective facets. The State Library of Tasmania runs
the public and reference library network for the whole state, and the
new catalogue has proved very popular with our clients as we've
gradually rolled it out. We've followed a progressive release process,
where we have asked our clients to comment on the new style catalogue
and suggest improvements. Responding to these suggestions has also
added to our development time, but we are now that much more confident
we have something that actually workds for our clients.
As far as we know, we're the first major library system in Australia to
go with a faceted catalogue. Please have a look if you get the chance.
http://catalogue.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Jan Lavelle
Senior Librarian (Systems Development)
State Library of Tasmania
91 Murray Street, Hobart 7000
Phone: 03 6233 4956
Fax: 03 6231 0927
Email : Jan.Lavelle_at_education.tas.gov.au
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER
Information in this transmission is intended only for the person(s) to
whom it is addressed and may contain privileged and/or confidential
information. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying or dissemination of the information is unauthorised and you
should delete/destroy all copies and notify the sender. No liability is
accepted for any unauthorised use of the information contained in this
transmission.
This disclaimer has been automatically added.
*******************************************************************
Visit the National Library of Scotland online at www.nls.uk
*******************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not
the intended recipient, please notify the ICT Helpdesk on
+44 131 623 3700 or ict_at_nls.uk and delete this e-mail. The
statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Library of
Scotland. This message is subject to the Data Protection Act 1998 and
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and has been scanned by
MessageLabs.
*******************************************************************
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER
Information in this transmission is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed and may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying or dissemination of the information is unauthorised and you should delete/destroy all copies and notify the sender. No liability is accepted for any unauthorised use of the information contained in this transmission.
This disclaimer has been automatically added.
Received on Thu Jul 12 2007 - 17:39:10 EDT