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: 

If you want something from LSC, click on the 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.

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

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

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.

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

Items that are Being Repaired can be requested. Whether they are at the shop getting a new binding or up in one of the levels waiting to be processed, you can click on the title of the item to see more information.

When you get to the next screen, also called the Full Record, you will see a button in the top right part of the screen that says ‘Get this title’.

Click on this button to get to the Classic Catalog. There will be more information about the location of this item and often a Request link. Click on the Request link and fill in your NetID and password to let us know that we need to try to find this for you.

Some items may not have a Request link. In this case, stop by our Reference or Circulation Desk (or email us at askref@duke.edu) and we will investigate the best method to find it for you.

This post will focus on using RSS (really simple syndication). RSS “feeds” free you from having to constantly check web sites to see if anything new and interesting has been added. Instead, the information is delivered to you as soon as it is available. If you’re not familiar with RSS or would like a refresher, take a few minutes to watch this “RSS in Plain English” video by CommonCraft:

Of course, the library catalog is neither news nor a blog. So, you might ask, what can you do with RSS in the library catalog? You can…

Get alerted when items of interest to you are added to the catalog

Let’s look at some examples of items. I’ll use the first to demonstrate.
(Bookmarked with the “Save Search” feature):

• All of the feature film DVDs in Lilly Library
• All biochemistry books in the Medical Center Library
• All rock music CD’s in the Music Library
• All new additions to the catalog
• All cataloged items about 19th Century North Carolina

Whether you are just browsing by clicking around or you have narrowed a set of results with a combination of search terms and selections from the left-hand “Refine Your Search” menu, you’ll see an RSS icon ( ) next to the number of results found.

Right-Click (or Option-Click) on the RSS icon to copy the feed URL. Click Copy Shortcut (or its equivalent–see below).

We have to add that feed URL to an RSS reader (also called an aggregator). I use Google Reader, so I’ll demonstrate with that. Feel free to substitute your aggregator of choice, or use your browser’s built-in feed subscription feature.

In Google Reader, click “Add subscription,” paste in the feed URL you copied from the catalog, and click “Add”.

Now that you have subscribed, any time an item is added to the catalog that matches what you were looking for (in this case, feature film DVDs at Lilly Library) the item will appear in your reader, just like new blog posts and news articles, with a link that will take you to the item in the catalog interface.

This is a great way to find out quickly and effortlessly about new additions to the catalog that match your interests.

Other uses of RSS feeds from the Catalog

Beyond delivering notices to your personal reader, you can use a feed from the catalog to generate a linked list of new additions that match a particular interest, and embed that in another web site. You could add a list to a blog, your Facebook profile, a course or departmental web site, or someplace else. The steps to do this will differ depending on which site, widget, or application you’re using, but use the same technique as above to get the feed URL.

RSS at Duke University Libraries

There are many other RSS feeds from Duke Libraries beyond the catalog. Subscribe to get library news, see job postings, or to read posts from Library Hacks or one of our several other blogs:
http://library.duke.edu/rss/index.html

Related resources

• New Library Catalog
  — [Help its development by submitting feedback]
• Duke Center for Instructional Technology page on RSS Aggregators
• Google Reader

Things to keep in mind:

• When you search the form in the “Search Our Resources” box results will display in the new catalog interface with the exception of GoogleScholar and E-Journals. The latter will continue to load in the (old interface) Resource Finder due to system limitations.
• All links to library.duke.edu/catalog will be redirected to the new catalog interface but catalog.library.duke.edu will continue to display the classic search screen.
• There will be links to the Classic Catalog from new catalog interface and from the Libraries’ homepage.
• There will be a link from new catalog interface to a comments/suggestions form by the end of the week.

A feedback form will be linked to from the new interface by the end of the week. Try it out now (find.library.duke.edu) and let us know what you think.

Since the item might be located in a number of places, the easiest thing to do is request its delivery. Here’s what you do:

• Click on the catalog “Request” link for the item

• An email will be sent to you when it is available for pick-up at the Circulation desk

Now you can get on with your research!

Duke community:

• Click on the “Request” link in the library catalog
• After entering your Net ID/password, indicate a library location for delivery
• An email will be sent to you when the requested materials arrive at the library

Guests:

• If you don’t have a Net ID/password, please use the Guest Request Form for LSC Materials

Helpful screen shots and detailed instructions can also be found here.