LSC Unveiled October 22, 2009
Posted by Joline Ezzell in : Catalog Tip , 2comments
- Shelves in the LSC
The catalog says the location for the item you want is “Library Service Center.” Where’s that? and what is it? The Library Service Center, or LSC, is a high-density shelving facility in East Durham that holds the library’s books and other materials for which there is no room in the campus libraries. With 30 ft. high shelves, it can hold 4 million volumes. No searching for call numbers on the shelf here – it’s all tied to barcodes.
Check it out for yourself:
next to the title. Then click the Request link in the “Get This Title” box. Deliveries are made to and from campus libraries twice a day during the week and once on weekends.Just say “Ni!” October 13, 2009
Posted by Catherine in : Catalog Tip, Life in the library, Noteworthy Resources, Tips for students , add a commentDo midterms and research papers have you crying out “Run away! Run away!?” Take a study break and just say “ni!” to them for awhile with Duke Libraries Monty Python resources. You’ll find videos, books, audio, and music in our catalog.
Knights who say ni
Why? Because, those zany blokes are celebrating their 40th anniversary in NY City this week. Besides, it’s a proven fact that laughing yourself silly is an effective antidote to stress. According to a literature review in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services 1
There are several beneficial efforts attributed to humor and laughter, including improved immune function, increased pain tolerance, and decreased stress response.
If you must rationalize it as schoolwork, you might hone your persuasive argument skills with The Argument Clinic
I don’t think there’s a punch-line scheduled, is there?
1 MacDonald, C. (2004). A chuckle a day keeps the doctor away: therapeutic humor & laughter. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 42(3), 18. http://search.ebscohost.com
Catalog (Beta) Improvements! March 24, 2009
Posted by Debra in : Catalog Tip, Research Help , 1 comment so farThere were three significant enhancements and three minor enhancement and/or fixes made to the Catalog (BETA)interface in the past two months, and we also have some additional updates about upcoming features to the system. If you have any concerns or questions about the Catalog (BETA)catalog interface, please send us a message via the feedback form.
UPDATES
Hold/recall requests can now be placed from within the Catalog (BETA) interface. You no longer have to jump to the Classic Catalog to place hold-requests and you will only need to sign-in once per session to place as many hold-requests as you like.
“My Reserves,” Tab. This tab provides you with listings of your current reserves materials. The tab requires you to sign on to see its contents, and only provides you with your course reserves information. This is a strong departure from the “classic” catalog’s “reserves” tab in that it doesn’t require you to remember (and correctly spell) your course numbers/instructors/titles, and provides total course reserves information on a single page. We are hopeful that this approach will provide dramatically improved functionality.
The system now uses an enhanced login process, with auto-logout timing for all users. You can log in using either your NetID or your library card number from a single log-in screen that defaults to using your NetID when available. All users’ sessions are also now timed so that they will end after a certain period of inactivity (currently, a half-hour of inactivity for logged-in patrons, an hour for non-logged-in users). Unlike the Classic Catalog, the auto-logout feature does not refresh the browser page and steal the computer’s focus; instead, the system performs the logout in the background when a user next tries to access the system.
Implemented Google Analytics for browsing statistics (completed February 4, 2009). Since early February 2009, all web traffic in the integrated search environment (Endeca, Metalib, etc.) has been logged by the Google Analytics tool for future analysis.
Syndetics book-cover-images now served up via the “Limelight” network (completed March 5, 2009). Implemented appropriate URL changes to provide Syndetics cover-images through Syndetics’ Content Delivery Network (Limelight); hopefully this will increase cover-image display/response rates as the cache-system gets progressively more data. Note that this does not affect the response speed (or failure rates) of other Syndetics enriched content, such as Summaries, Table of contents, First Chapters, etc.
Catalog interface no longer errors out when going directly from a results-list page to a full-record page (which was not part of the results-list) and then trying to search again on the unchanged terms and index that produced the original results-list.
DIACRITICS
There is good and bad news on the diacritics front. On the negative side, after extensive testing of the thesaurus-based solution in Catalog (BETA)version 6.x, the Search TRLN Operations Committee ultimately came to the conclusion that even the performance enhancements in the newer version of Catalog (BETA)were not sufficient to mitigate the performance problems introduced by using a custom-built thesaurus to provide full diacritics-searching support.
On the positive side, additional extensive testing on a “normalization” strategy appears to provide a stable, performance solution to the long-standing issue of diacritics-searching support. Even better, this solution works on the existing version of Catalog (BETA), which means that a solution is not tied to upgrading Catalog (BETA)on the Search TRLN servers.
Currently, there is no specific date set for implementing the solution, but it is likely to take place in early April 2009. At that time we can hope to say with assurance (really!) that the Endeca-based catalog can handle diacritics searches. Thanks to every one for their patience in this important aspect of the system.
UPCOMING PLANS FOR THE INTERFACE
Incorporation of “My Library Card” functionality into the interface
Incorporation of “shopping cart”-like features in the interface so that you can manage multiple catalog (or article) records at once
LibX now available for IE January 7, 2009
Posted by Jim Coble in : Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Tips for students , 1 comment so farLibX is a web browser extension (also known as a plug-in or add-on) that places a toolbar in your browser, visual “cues” in certain web pages that link to Duke Library resources related to the item you’re viewing, and new menu items in the right-click menu in your browser, getting you quick access to Duke Library resources from whatever web page you’re on. A version for Firefox has been available for some time but the creators of LibX have now released a version that works in Internet Explorer (IE) 6 and 7.
More information about what you can do with LibX, where to get it, and how to install it in both Firefox and IE can be found on the Library’s LibX Tool page.
What is beta anyway? July 30, 2008
Posted by Catherine in : Catalog Tip , add a commentYou might have noticed that our new catalog interface says (beta) on the tab. Now if we were Douglas Adams we could be referring to the fish pictured here: 
But no, in this galaxy, we are referring to something not quite as beautiful and complete–a pilot version of the catalog interface. The interface is still in the process of development, with some features remaining to be implemented (and some pretty cool features like faceted browsing and linking to other Triangle libraries already there).
The good news for users is that “beta” means that we (the library) are receptive to making changes more nimbly with this interface than in other established ones. And unlike the beta fish, of which it’s said: “It is important not to feed your Beta fish too much live food as it has been known to cause problems,”
we encourage as much live input as possible. Once you are in the new catalog, just click the Feedback link at the top right. Or go directly to: http://library.duke.edu/research/help/catalog/feedback.html
So go ahead and feed the beta fish! Throw that constructive criticism at us and help us make it beautiful! We want to hear from students, faculty, and other researchers as well as library staff so that we can make it work best for all of the users in our library galaxy.
picture and quote from www.betafacts.com
