Tuesday, November 16, 2010

My Search for DVDs

I pride myself as an expert searcher. So, it really drives me insane when I get tripped up by how our catalog searches.

My family and I will be flying for Christmas and I decided one of the easiest ways to keep my son quiet on the flight would be to bring some videos along for him to watch. Up till this point, my son has only watched a few videos I've checked out from the library. However, we're going to be gone for 3 weeks which is longer than one can check out videos, even if I renew it once. I decided I would check out a couple of Elmo videos from the library to preview them and then buy one or two to take with us on our trip.

Since I just wanted videos, not books or music, I went to our catalog's Advanced Page. Next to Title Keyword I entered Elmo. Under Format I chose Video Recording - DVD and then clicked the red arrow to start my search. I retrieved around 17 videos. This was great except I remembered there was an Elmo video about pets that my son really liked that wasn't included in this list. If it wasn't included, what other videos might I be missing?

After a moment or two of thinking, I realized that the video I previously checked out was an "Elmo's World" video. Our catalog wasn't smart enough to realize that Elmo's and Elmo are essentially the same words. This is because our catalog doesn't have stemming capabilities. Once I figured out the problem, the solution was simple. I added an asterisk after Elmo so my search now looks like this. Since the asterisk works as a wildcard character in our catalog, it will find all DVDs with the words Elmo and Elmo's.

Friday, November 12, 2010

New Catalog is Up!

Yesterday we started the upgrade for our integrated library system (ILS) which includes the catalog. While we are still working on upgrading some parts of the ILS, the catalog has been updated and most of the bugs squashed. To use it, visit http://catalog.mylibrary.us/.

New Features:

  • Did You Mean
  • Series Information is now located in the left column of the full bib record. See The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for an example.
  • We also have some additional content that shows below the item information on the page. We are still playing with the formatting of both this content and the series content so this may change in the future.
  • Searching using boolean operators has changed. See Eileen's Video Tutorial for more information
  • Advanced Limits can now be removed without re-submitting a search. See Eileen's Video Tutorial for more information
  • Staff and patrons can now email search results (before staff email addresses didn't work). After retrieving search results, scroll down to the very bottom of the page and enter a subject and your email address.
  • More DVD images
  • The Holds page now has a "Suspend Until" column. This lets you see which holds you have suspended and when they will reactivate.
  • There is now a difference in notation between holds deleted in the public versus staff catalog interfaces.

For those of you that subscribed to HIP RSS feeds, that functionality isn't available yet but I expect it will be fixed in the next couple of days.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Little Book Icons

Have you ever wondered what the little book icon at the end of some titles but not others means? For example, take a look at this search. The first entry doesn't have a book icon at the end of the title but the second one does. Why? Theoretically, the book icon is suppose to mean that the library you are looking at owns a copy of that book. However, this is really only useful if you're either using a dedicated catalog computer in the library or manually going to that library's catalog profile. Our main catalog that you access at http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ is associated with the Farr library. So, if you see little book icons on it, that means that the item is available at Farr. How do you access an individual library's profile manually? Use the links below: See Item Order in the Catalog for more information on ways a library's profile matters.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Series Trial

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been exploring a couple of different vendors that add series information to our catalog. Currently, we have a trial for series info from both Syndetics and NoveList Select in our test catalog. I am very interested in receiving feedback on which service you feel is better.

A Couple of Notes

  • For now, both the Syndetics and Novelist series info, if it exists, will be in the left bar. The Novelist series info has a label of "Titles in Series from NoveList" whereas the Syndetics label just says "Series." Please focus on the content, not placement, of the information. Once we decide on which service to use, I will work more on the formating.
  • NoveList is doing some weird stuff. The first time I went to Interview with the Vampire, only the Syndetics series info showed but now both NoveList and Syndetics series info shows. However, this might have just been a momentary blip. Let me know if you're having the same experiences.
  • NoveList loads very slowly. When doing your own comparisons, make sure the page has completely finished before you determine whether or not NoveList has series info for a specific title. I talked to a NoveList tech about this and he said one reason this is happening is because they wait for all the other content on the page to load before it loads. This is so patrons who just want a call number don't have to wait around for NoveList to load first. However, he also said they are working on speeding this up and hope to have it faster by the end of the year.
  • At this point, Syndetics doesn’t have links but it does have the order specified. NoveList doesn’t show the order yet but that is a feature that is suppose to be in their next release.
  • All the NoveList links point to our live production catalog. So, if you click on a link, make sure that you go back to the test catalog before trying any additional series info. When testing, make sure you always see the big red “TEST” image in the upper left corner of the catalog.

Some Examples to Try:

Other NoveList Content
At the moment, I'm not officially evaluating the other NoveList Select content. However, I would be interested in hearing any opinions you have about it. My first impressions are that sometimes the NoveList Similar Titles is more relevant than LibraryThing for fiction but isn't at all useful for non-fiction titles. I also find the "Similar Authors" to be an interesting feature.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Catalog Unavailable Labor Day

In prepartion for our ILS upgrade on November 11, I will be working on the catalog on Labor Day, September 6, 2010. During this time period the patron catalog may be slow or completely unresponsive. Services should be back to normal by the time the library opens on Tuesday.

Patron Catalog Not Searching New Items (Problem Fixed)

UPDATE: This probablem has now been fixed. If you encounter any more problems, send me an email or leave a comment.

The patron catalog's keyword searches have been corrupted. I expect this problem will be fixed by 12:00pm MDT today, 9/2/2010. I have uploaded a backup of the indexes that is current as of August 15. However, any items that were added after that date will not appear unless you do a Title - Alphabetical search for them. Any search index that ends with the word “keyword” has been affected by this problem. If you cannot find what you are looking for, contact one of our library locations as they can access the catalog via a different interface that is still working.

This is just a search indexing problem so you should still be able to place requests for anything you can find and look up account information such as items currently checked out, etc.

I am currently in the process of reindexing the keyword searches to bring them up to date. However, this process will take several hours and I am currently estimating that it will be finished around noon today. I will post an update to this entry once everything is back to normal.

Monday, August 23, 2010

New Blu-ray Search

I've just added a "New Blu-ray" limit to the Advanced page of our catalog. Among other things, this allows you to retrieve a list of all our new Blu-rays. To try it out:

  1. Go to the Advanced search in our catalog.
  2. Next to Title Keyword enter an *. Using an asterisk wild card for a title search means that it will find all items with a title.
  3. Under the New limit box click New Blu-ray.
  4. If desired, choose a sorting option.
  5. Click the Red Arrow to start your search.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

"Did you mean" in New Catalog

A couple of years back, I collected a list of 814 real search terms. Of those, 13% of the searches had a misspelling or typo in them. Unfortunately, our catalog usually returns no results when a word is misspelled, even if it's an obvious typo.

In order to help our users retrieve better results for their searches, we have been looking at a number of different ways to provide a spell check option. Most of the products I found didn't pass my initial "harry poter" search test. However, a couple of months ago, I found an article talking about a Unicorn ILS library using a service called Lucien from Jaunter. I tried out one of the libraries using it and was very pleased with the results. As a bonus, this service is also significantly cheaper than many of the other options.

For the past several months I have been working with Jaunter to try and incorporate "did you mean" suggestions into our new test catalog. We're the first Horizon ILS library to try using their service. At this point, we have it working for the basic search page. Jaunter is still trying to get it to work for the Advanced Search option but given how our catalog is designed, that may not be possible.

I tested the Lucien suggestions using the misspelled words I had previously compiled. It offered correct suggestions about 83% of the time. Here are some of examples I tried:

  • eclips
  • haibane renmai
  • the wedding planers daughter
  • spiderwick chronicals field guide
  • ennvy
  • rurouni kenshi
  • jujistsu
  • english liturature
  • mistang horse
  • malaryia

At this point, I believe this feature is ready for staff testing. Go to our test catalog and let me know what you think of the spelling suggestions.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Adding Series Info to the Catalog

One of the flaws in our catalog is the lack of series info. Often, our catalog records will include series info for a particular book but it won't list the other books in the series. For example, our entry for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight book does list both the series and the series number for the book. However, it doesn't provide a convenient way to know the order of the other books in the series.

I'm currently exploring catalog enhancements that would allow us to show series info in the actual record. However, some vendors have a better coverage of series than others. I need your help in coming up with a list of popular books in a series that I can use to test and make sure any vendor we consider has enough information to be useful. I'm looking for examples for children, young adult, and adult series. Please post a comment or send me an email if you have suggestions I should add to my test list.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

New Language Limits

I've just made a change to our catalog's advanced search page that allows better limits by language.

Originally, our language limits were based on collection codes. Collection codes are designed to let you know where a particular item is located. For instance, you would expect an item with a "Large Print Fiction" collection code to be shelved in the large print area. However, the only language that has its own collection code is Spanish. While Spanish is currently the dominent non-English language within our district, other languages are also becoming more common. As a result, we decided it was time to look at a better way to search by language.

The new language limits I have just implemented are based on MARC, the underlying data for every bib record. This allows us to limit based on a much wider range of languages. For the sake of simplicity, I have decided to only provide limits for languages where we have at least 20 works in that language. Currently, this list includes:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Danish
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Latin
  • Persian
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Somali
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
Let me know if you feel any specific language should be added to this list and I'll research it.

An Example:
With the old language limits based on collection codes, you couldn't search for Spanish music. While we have collection codes for many Spanish items, we don't have one specifically for music. However, using the new language limits, this search is now possible.

  1. Go to our catalog, http://catalog.mylibrary.us/
  2. Click on the Advanced search page
  3. Type an * next to Title Keyword
  4. Under Format, choose Music
  5. Under Language choose Spanish
  6. Click the red arrow to start your search
You should now see a list of all music in Spanish within the district.

Quirk Alert:
While limiting by MARC tags instead of collection codes is generally more precise, there is a bug in HIP that does prevent all matching records from being displayed. For those that remember their cataloging lessons, it searches the 008 field but only the first 041 $a subfield. What this means is that the limit should return results for all records in the original language but it may miss some titles that are either multilingual works or the language is available as a subtitle for a movie.

For example, look at the movie Walk on Water. This movie's original language is Hebrew which is reflected by appearing in the 008 tag. However, it is also available to watch in English or German. Because English is listed as the first language in the 041 field, if I limit by English, the movie will appear. However, since German is the third language listed, it will not appear when I limit by German.

Thanks go to Clara M for suggesting the original idea of using MARC language codes instead of collection codes and Eric P for later testing and patiently explaining the intricacies of the MARC codes to me.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Catalog Upgrade Update

For the past several weeks our ILS Upgrade team has been working furiously to identify the essential features in our catalog and assign people to test them in the upgraded version of our software. You can see our project site here as well as the list of features we plan to test. We hope to have the initial round of testing completed by the end of July.

Here are the essential features we have identified for the patron catalog:

  • Search Indexes work as expected
  • Test how back button works after searching
  • Make sure Full Bib Record looks correct and links work (including MARC view) both for regular and serial records
  • Syndetics content is appearing ok
  • LibraryThing Content appearing ok
  • Advanced Search working
  • Phrase Searching
  • "New at the Library" still functional
  • Wildcard searches
  • MyLibrary Browse Books/Movies works
  • See if Exclamation points in searches has been fixed
  • Make sure all My Account functionality works
  • Update Profile Info
  • Renew checked out items
  • Make Requests (including copy specific)
  • Cancel Requests
  • Suspend Requests
  • View Fines/Blocks
  • My List Functionality
  • Ability to email lists
  • Make sure the Spanish catalog translations transferred
Did we miss anything? Send me an email or post a comment and let me know.

In addition to core features, we are also exploring adding some additional enhancements. They include:

  • Showing DVD cover images in the search results
  • Adding more information for books in a series
  • Adding a spellchecker
I'm very excited about the spellchecker option and hope to have more to share with you by next week.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Author Alphabetical Searches

I think it's time to take a break from talking about the new patron catalog. Instead, let's talk about the Author Alphabetical search index results.

One of the many confusing aspects of our catalog is how it displays author results when using an Author Alphabetical search index. For example, take a look at the author results for Janet Evanovich. We see something like this:

1.Evanovich, Janet230
2.Evanovich, Janet. High five. Spanish1
3.Evanovich, Janet. Ivan takes a wife5
4.Evanovich, Janet. One for the money.2
5.Evanovich, Janet. Plum lovin'.1
6.Evanovich, Janet. Plum lucky.1
7.Evanovich, Janet. Three to get deadly.2
8.Evanovich, Janet. Two for the dough.2
9.Evanovich, Janet. Visions of sugar plums.1
Why are there so many Janet Evanovich entries? A couple of weeks ago, Eric Petersen, our Technical Services Supervisor, answered this question. So, with his permission, I'm copying it below.
Author/title’s in the “author” indexes are generally of these purposes:
  1. The author/title heading represents an instance of that work in a collection. For example, in a collection of short stories. “One for the money” is part of the collection Three plums in one.
  2. To indicate what the original title of a work was. For example, ”Ivan takes a wife” is the original title of Love overboard. This can also be seen on items that are translations. “High five. Spanish” means that this item, High five, is in Spanish.
  3. The author/title is related to the item cataloged. This is seen most in our catalog for movie adaptions of books. For example: Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. lists the movies, not the books.

However, if you've used a lot of other library systems, you'll have seen that many of their author results are not as confusing. Basically, this is because our particular ILS processes author entries a little differently than other systems. It does not have the ability to just show the author's name. Instead, it shows the entire entry for the author/work combination. Theoretically, we could kludge something together that would fix the display problem. However, this would likely result in our catalog records no longer meeting common cataloging standards. This, in turn, would complicate any ILS changes we made in the future.

So, which author entry should I pick when faced with multiple authors that look the similar? I usually click whichever entry has the most titles attached to it. In the case of Janet Evanovich, it would be the first entry.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Need Library Staff to Test New Patron Catalog

The last couple of weeks have been a blur. We've had our kickoff ILS testing meeting and now I'm immersed in the details. We've picked leaders to head testing for the various areas of the new library system. While my main responsibility will be organizing the project, I also chose to be the leader for the new patron catalog because it's my favorite ILS module (is it wrong for me to have favorites?).

Each leader will gather a group of staff together that can help with the testing. We're going to compile a list of features that need to be funcitonal and then develop a plan to test them and submit any problems so they can (hopefully) be fixed. In addition, each group is going to look at enhancements available with the new catalog that we may want to implement. For instance, the new version of the patron catalog should be able to show more DVD images in the search results.

My next steps are to identify staff that would be interested in testing the new patron catalog. If you are interested in helping, send me an email and I can explain more what would be involved.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Displaying Reviews in Our Catalog

As I've mentioned previously, one of the features we use from LibraryThing is the ability to rate books as well as read and write reviews. Currently, borrowers only see reviews if they click on the bib record.

Sometimes I want to be able to quickly see if a book has been rated instead of having to click each title so I added this feature to our test catalog. What do you think? Do you like seeing the ratings on the summary page in addition to the full bib page? Let me know by adding a comment to the blog entry or sending me an email.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Comparison of Boolean Searching in the Old vs. New Catalog

Basic Overview of Boolean Searching in our Catalog
One of the nice features of our catalog is its ability to use Boolean Operators such as AND, OR and NOT. By default, our catalog's keyword searches combine all the words you enter with AND. So, if you choose a Subject Keyword search and type Washington state, the catalog looks for subjects that contain the word Washington and the word state. However, let's say we were searching for books about cake or candy. An easy way to do this is to click on Advanced. Then, in the first drop down box, choose Subject Keyword and enter the word cake. Change the right drop down box from AND to OR. On the second line, choose another Subject Keyword search and this time enter the word candy. Click the red arrow to submit the search. You can see the results here.

Since we're using the same search index for both words, we can also do this search on the Basic Search page. Click on Basic and choose the Subject Keyword index. Then, in the text box, type cake OR candy1 and click the red arrow. This gives us exactly the same results as the Advanced Search did.

Unfortunately, the catalog doesn't have an order of precedence for its operators (AND, OR, NOT). So, when searching with multiple words, it's best to enclose each group of words with parenthesis2. For example, if I were looking for books by Dan Brown or James Patterson, I would choose an Author Keyword search and then type (Dan Brown) OR (James Patterson) and click the red arrow.

Using the Advanced Search, let's try a Title Keyword search for "Trophy Wife". Leave the Boolean Operator as AND. Next to Author Keyword, type (Diana Diamond) – make sure to include the parenthesis – and click the red arrow to search. This search will return all records that have the phrase Trophy Wife in the title where the author's name contains the words Diana Diamond. Click the Refine Search link to go back. This time, instead of AND, change the operator on the first line to OR and click the red arrow to search. This will return all titles that include the phrase Trophy Wife (regardless of author) and all books that Diana Diamond has written. Refine the search again and this time choose NOT. This will return all books that have the title phrase Trophy Wife that are not written by Diana Diamond. Here are the results. The last Boolean choice is the XOR. This is a funny one. When you search with the XOR it will return all books that include the title phrase Trophy Wife and all books that are written by Diana Diamond except for the books with the title Trophy Wife written by Diana Diamond (see the results).

Features and Bug Fixes in the New Catalog

1) In our current catalog, it doesn't matter whether Boolean Operators are entered in upper or lowercase. However, this means that it can't tell when the word NOT is used as part of a title or as a search command. As a result, searching for the book Size 12 is Not Fat by Meg Cabot fails because it is looking for all titles that have the words Size 12 but NOT the word fat in the title. The new version of our catalog fixes this problem. In order for the catalog to recognize a word as a boolean operator, it must be in all uppercase. Thus, if you search in our new catalog for Size 12 is NOT Fat the search still fails because NOT is all in capitals and thus is used as a search command. However, searching for Size 12 is Not Fat works as a normal borrower might expect. Note: Because of this change, it is best not to type in all caps when searching the new catalog since this would mean you're telling the catalog to use NOT as an operator.

2) It use to be that the catalog did not automatically group words in the same search box together. When using the AND operator, it doesn't matter. However, if you use any of other three operators, OR, NOT or XOR, you way not retrieve the results you wanted. For example, let's say I would like to retrieve all books titled To the Last Man that were not writter by Zane Grey. I might be tempted to do a Title Keyword for "To the Last Man", choose NOT, and then an Author Keyword for Zane Grey. You can see that no results are retrieved. However, if do the exact same search by put parenthesis around Zane Grey's name, I can see that there is a book by Jeff Shaara that matches my search query. Happily, this has changed in the new catalog. Once we switch to the new catalog in most cases it won't matter whether or not you group words together using parenthesis. NOTE: If you are using Boolean Operators from the Basic search page, it is still best to use parenthesis to group words together.

3) The new catalog has another bug fix dealing with Boolean Operators. Let's say I wanted to refine a search that used the NOT operator. In our current catalog, when you click Refine Search it sets all the boolean operators back to AND even if your previous search was using something different. This annoyance has been fixed in our new catalog.

4) In our current catalog, the only way to indicate that you want to exclude words from a search result was to type NOT. However, now you can also use - to indicate the catalog should exclude some results. This is similar to how you exclude words when using Google. For example, let's say that I want to find the book It Happened One Autumn but I don't want the large print copy to show up. Performing a Title Keyword search for "It Happened One Autumn" -large will return my desired result. Note: There is no space between the dash and the word you wish to exclude.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Requesting Books Without Any Items

Ideally, every bib record in our catalog would list items that borrowers could request or checkout. However, sometimes a search will return a bib record that doesn't show any items. This occurs for one of two reasons:

  1. "Lost" or "missing" items are hidden from the public catalog. Thus, if all items for a particular record are lost or missing, no items will be shown.
  2. We no longer own any items for that particular resource. This happens when the library deletes items either because they have been lost or missing long enough they are unlikely to be returned or because the items are old or damaged and should be removed from the collection.

In the first situation, when a borrower tries to request the resource, the catalog will say, "This title is not available for requests." While this may not be the clearest message, it at least says that the item can't be requested.

However, in the second situation the catalog will say, "Visit the full bib page: All the items in this bib are bookable1. Book a copy of this bib from the full bib page." This is due to a bug in our catalog. These items no longer exist in our system and so they cannot be requested or checked out.

In both cases, the best way to borrower the resource is by submitting an interlibrary loan request in order to borrow the item from another library outside our district.

1What is a "bookable item?" This is a catalog module that allows borrowers to reserve library materials for a specific date and time. It is most often used in an academic library setting for resources located in closed stacks. None of the High Plains Library District's collections are bookable.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Preview the New Catalog

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are working on testing a new version of our catalog software. For the most part, this version looks the same as our old version. However, there are some new features and bug fixes which I will explain in greater detail in later posts.

If you want a sneak peek of our new patron catalog, click here. IMPORTANT: At the moment, this is just a test system. You will not receive any requests you place in the test catalog. Also, any items you add to "My List" in the test catalog may be deleted without notice. To make requests or add items to "My List," please visit our current catalog at http://catalog.mylibrary.us/.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Notice: Catalog Unavailable Friday, May 14 from 8:00-10:00 AM

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog and all Requests

WHEN:
Friday, May 14, 2010 from 8:00-10:00 AM

WHY:
Troubleshoot a problem with the catalog last Friday

DETAIL:
Last Friday, May 7, the catalog unexpectedly stopped working. I have done some preliminary investigation but need to work on the problem more this Friday in order to prevent the system from going down again.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Catalog Updates

SirsiDynix, our integrated library systems vendor, has released a new version of Horizon. This release of Horizon requires that we upgrade our database, staff client, public catalog, reporting tool and more. In addition, our server hardware is near end of life so we will also be replacing our physical hardware. In short, it's a very major upgrade. We want to take advantage of the improvements in this release but also want to make sure we don't run into any unexpected problems.1.

Upgrade Timeline

  • In late April the hardware for the new server arrived and was prepared for the install of the newest version of Horizon.
  • Last week, SirsiDynix installed the newest version of Horizon on our server.
  • As soon as I have verified that the system is stable, I will let staff test the new public interface. I expect that this will probably happen sometime next week.
  • During the rest of the summer I, along with other library staff, will work on thoroughly testing each component of the new software. We want to make sure that all the functionality we currently have continues to work correctly in the new version.
  • In November, after we have made sure the new system is good, we plan to move all the data from our current system to the new software. We are scheduled to do this while the library in closed in hopes of minimizing the inconvenience to our staff and library borrowers.

1A little bit of history: Back in the summer of 2004 SirsiDynix released the now infamous Horizon Information Portal (HIP) 4.0. Fortunately, we did not upgrade at that time. However, some of the libraries that did upgrade claimed to be down for weeks trying to get the catalog to work correctly. The release we will be upgrading to is built on the much more stable HIP 3 series instead of the now defunct HIP 4 series. In any event, it is still very important that we thoroughly test this new software to make sure it meets the needs of both our staff and library borrowers.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Notice: Catalog Unavailable for Next Hour (May 2, 2010)

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog and all Requests

WHEN:
Sunday, May 2, 2010 from 7:30-8:30pm

WHY:
Preparation for new catalog server

DETAIL:
We are working on creating a replacement computer server for our catalog and testing a new version of our software. This outage is to copy system settings from the old server to the new server in order to provide a duplicate test environment.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

LibraryThing and Our Catalog Part 2

What are tags?
Tags are a way to categorize things. In the case of LibraryThing, it's a way to categorize books. The tags you see in the library catalog are created by LibraryThing users. Unlike subject headings, any LibraryThing user can add their own tags to a book.

Tags are particularly useful for genre fiction where subject headings don’t always match common usage. For example, the term “cozy mystery” isn’t an official subject heading. Yet, users often add the tag “cozy mystery” to books such as Aunt Dimity's Death and Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth. Here is an example of the tags for Murder with Peacocks.

Within a tag cloud, the larger the tag, the more people have used it. In this case, more people consider Murder with Peacocks a mystery rather than a romance. See Wikipedia for more information about tag clouds.

Using Tags to Search
Clicking on a tag within the catalog will pop up a window that displays all the other books in our collection with the same tag. For instance, clicking on amateur detective on the Murder with Peacocks tag cloud retrieves books such as Dying for Chocolate and The Mummy Case. Clicking on any of the resulting titles will redirect you to more information about that book.

It is also possible to search for multiple tags at a time. For instance, let’s say I wanted a list of books with the tags young adult and space opera. Here’s how I would search:

  1. Go to http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ and search for any popular book (Kite Runner is a good choice)
  2. Click on a title to bring up the detailed information page
  3. Click on any of the tags that appear on the left. If a tag cloud does not appear, search for another book
  4. Within the tag browser search box, enter the tags you wish to search for separated by a comma. In this case, I enter young adult, space opera
  5. Click the Search button to retrieve your results
To exclude a specific tag from your search, preface it with a double dash. For instance, if I wanted young adult space opera but did not want any books dealing with the military, my search would have looked like this: young adult, space opera, --military. To just "demote" military titles from the results, use a single dash.

Reviews
Another feature LibraryThing provides is the ability to view and write reviews of books. If reviews exist, you can read them by going to the detailed information page for a book and clicking on see reviews/add a review. A window will pop up that displays the reviews. These reviews come from both LibraryThing users and High Plains Library District’s borrowers.

To write a review:

  1. Go to the detailed information page for the book you wish to review. I'm going to look up Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.
  2. Within the detailed view of the book, click on see reviews/add a review.
  3. Click Review this Yourself.
    • If you have not reviewed items before, click next to Start a new reviews account and enter your username, password, email address, and click Submit.
    • Otherwise, enter your existing username and password.
  4. If desired, choose a star rating, enter your review, and click save.
Reviews must be approved by library staff before they are posted.

Brochure
Click here if you would like a brochure, in PDF format, that covers LibraryThing widgets in our catalog.

Monday, April 26, 2010

LibraryThing and Our Catalog Part 1

What is LibraryThing?
LibraryThing is a web application that allows people to create and share their personal book collections. To see an example, you can visit Diana Gabaldon’s LibraryThing collection. I've been using LibraryThing as my personal library organizer since 2006 and have been very impressed with it.

In addition to adding books to their collection, LibraryThing allows its users to write reviews, add tags to books, and compare their personal library with other users.

What is LibraryThing for Libraries?
LibraryThing aggregates all the personalization users add to their catalogs, such as tags and reviews, and sells this information to libraries. Unlike Novelist, LibraryThing will only link to books that our library district owns.

What Information in our catalog comes from LibraryThing?
LibraryThing “widgets” are found on the detailed information page for each book. They include:

  • Similar Books
  • Other Editions
  • Reviews
  • Shelf Browse
  • Tags
The Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book offers a good example of all of these features.

Similar Books
One of our LibraryThing widgets is called “Similar Books.” However, this is a misnomer. Instead, these book lists are closer to an “if you like this book, you might also like . . .” list. Sometimes these books are actually similar to the current book but sometimes the books are just owned by the people with similar book collections. For example, consider the suggestions for Who Wants Candy? by Jane Sharrock. The suggestions are The Ultimate Candy Book, Candyfreak, Sweets, Candy and me, and Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot. Only the first suggestion, The Ultimate Candy Book, is a recipe book like Who Wants Candy?. However, those that like making candy may also enjoy reading about the history of candy which is where the other suggestions are useful. Clicking on any of the books listed will take you to more information on that book.

Other Editions
When viewing the detailed information for a title, LibraryThing will search our catalog to see if any other editions are available. If they are, LibraryThing will list these books in the left column. Clicking on the title of one of the books will take you to more information on it. This is particularly useful if your original book has no copies available for checkout. For an example, see Caught by Harlan Coben.

Shelf Browse
Shelf Browse is our newest LibraryThing feature. It allows you to virtually browse books similar to browsing books in a physical library. This is particularly useful for information books as similar subjects are often shelved near each other. For example, when I go to the detailed information for Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, it shows me the book covers for other books on solving sleep problems in children. Click Explore the virtual shelf browser: Full Screen to see even more books.

In my next post, I'll discuss LibraryThing Reviews and tags

Monday, April 19, 2010

Searching for a CD

A while back, I checked out a CD from Carbon Valley that I really enjoyed. In fact, I decided to return the CD and buy a copy for myself. However, I returned the CD before writing down the title of the artist. Over the weekend, I visited Carbon Valley with Calvin, my son, and decided I should try to hunt down the CD. I remembered that it was in the classical section so I started flipping through CDs. However, Calvin was getting impatient and I didn't feel like flipping through all of the CDs. Plus, I'd never find it if someone else had it checked out. I decided to try searching for it via our catalog.

Being the catalog sys admin, you'd think I would immediately have the perfect search strategy to find what I'm looking for. I remembered that one of the songs on the CD was "My Funny Valentine" which I'd also heard on Lullaby for my favorite insomniac by Ahn Trio. I knew that our catalogers usually include the individual songs on a CD in the "contents note" of the catalog record. So, I decided to try a Title Keyword search for "My Funny Valentine." I retrieved no relevant results, not even the CD by Ahn Trio. I decided that I must have remember the name of the song wrong so I went and looked up the Ahn Trio record. I had remembered the name of the song correctly. Suddenly, I realized that I had used the wrong search index. I felt kind of sheepish.

Originally, the Title Keyword for our public catalog would search the content notes of a record. However, searching this field can more than double the results for a simple keyword search. We decided that since most people are looking for the main title of a resource, it made sense to seperate out the content note from the main Title Keyword search index. We made this change several years ago. Now if people want to search the content note of a record, they need to use the Title and Content Keyword search. This search index will retrieve both title and content keyword matches. As a result, this is the index that I should have used.

Once I realized my mistake, I redid my search using the correct index. Even though I enclosed my search query in quotation marks, which forces it to search for the entire phrase, I still retrieved 36 results. I realized that if I used our adavanced search, I could narrow down this number significantly. Here's the steps I took:

  • On the advanced search page, I clicked the drop down box and chose Title and Content Keyword.
  • In the text box next to that index, I entered "My funny valentine", including the quotes.
  • Under Location, I chose Carbon Valley Regional Library.
  • Under Format, I selected "Music."
  • I clicked the red arrow to start my search.
My search returned 9 results which was a much smaller number to scan. I scrolled down until I saw a title that sounded familar, Music from a farther room by Lucia Micarelli. Luckily, it was checked in so I quickly flipped through the "m" CDs in the classical music section and happily confirmed that this was the CD I had been searching for.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Suspend a Request

It's really nice to be able to put a request on books that are either currently checked out or are owned by another library. I'm always so excited by the vast number of books available within our district. However, sometimes the books become available when I'm on vacation or wouldn't have time to read them. This is where the "Suspend Request" feature is useful. This feature allows me to temporarily prevent a request from being put on the hold shelf for me. Instead, it goes to the next person in line. Once I reactivate the request, the system goes back to normal.

Reasons to suspend a request

  • You're going on vacation and want to make sure the books don't expire on the hold shelf before you get back
  • You have too many things checked out already and don't want items to be put on hold until you can check them out
  • You've requested a TV Series but don't want it to come in until the weekend (Note, this is kind of like timing the stock market. It's not an exact science but it's worth a try.)

How to suspend a request

  1. Go to our catalog and click on the My Account tab.
  2. Enter your barcode and PIN and click Login
  3. Click on the Holds link under My Account
  4. Scroll down to the section labeled Requested items not yet available
  5. Place a check mark next to every request you wish to suspend
  6. Looks for the section that says, Suspend until: MM-DD-YYYY. Change the date to when you wish the requests to reactivate
  7. Click the Change Status button
If our catalog successfully suspended the request, you should see the status next to the item change from "Active" to "Suspended."
Quirk Alert: Many people mistakenly believe that the date in the Expires column is the date your hold will reactivate. This is not correct. The "Expires" date is the date that your request will be deleted if you have not already received the requested item. Usually this will only occur if all copies of the resource have been lost.
Note: Once an item has an "In Transit" status, you can no longer suspend the request. It is too late to prevent it from being put on the hold shelf for you.

How to Reactivate a Request By default, requests will automatically reactivate on the date you specified when suspending the item. This date is not visible in our catalog but staff can look it up in our Horizon staff interface. However, you also have the option to manually reactivate your request.

  1. Go to our catalog and click on the My Account tab.
  2. Enter your barcode and PIN and click Login
  3. Click on the Holds link under My Account
  4. Scroll down to the section labeled Requested items not yet available
  5. Place a check mark next to every request you wish to reactivate
  6. Click the Change Status button. The requested item should now show a status of "Active."
Note: The Change Status button is a toggle button. If a request is suspended when you click it, the request will reactivate. However, if the request is currently active, clicking the Change Status button will suspend it until the date specified.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

New Advanced Search Limits

Two new formats have been added to our advanced search page. You can now specifically search for both board books and ebooks.

Limiting by Board Books
My baby loves Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw. At the moment, we're limited to board books because I don't want to have to pay replacement fees for torn pages :) To find a list of other board books Nancy Shaw has written, I would do the following:

  1. Navigate to the Advanced page in our catalog.
  2. Next to Author Keyword enter Nancy Shaw. Note, since this is a keyword index, I can enter the author's name in any order I want instead of having to enter last name, first name.
  3. In the Format box, highlight Books - Board Books.
  4. Click the Red Arrow
  5. to start the search.
Here are the results.

Limiting by eBooks
The eBook limit will retrieve results from our eBook collections which include books from Overdrive, Safari Tech Books Select, and Netlibrary. Let's say I was interested in finding eBooks about using my iPhone. This is how I would create my search:

  1. Navigate to the Advanced page in our catalog.
  2. Next to Subject Keyword enter iPhone.
  3. In the Format box, highlight Books - eBooks.
  4. Click the Red Arrow
  5. to start the search.
Here are my results.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Item Order in the Catalog

When using the keyword search indexes, the catalog returns results in a "bib summary" format. This means that it shows brief bibliographic information such as the title, author, publisher, publication date, and up to two items per resource. However, many of our resources have more than two items. In order to see the full list of items, and additional information about the resource, you must click on the title to display the "Full Bib."

How does the catalog determine which two items to display on the bib summary screen? Naturally, the answer is complicated. Our catalog uses two criteria to determine which items will display first.

  • The library location your catalog is using
  • The availability of an item

Each instance of our catalog is assigned a default library location. The general catalog that is accessed either from our website or by going directly to http://catalog.mylibrary.us/, is assigned to the Farr Regional Libray. This means that items will display using Farr libary's default order which is Farr Regional Library followed by Centennial Park, Lincoln Park and then the other libraries in the district. However, the catalog-only computers (PACs) within a specific library have that library's items listed first. For instance, Carbon Valley Regional Library's PACs would show Carbon Valley's items first followed by Erie Community Library. Note: this is true only for the PACs in the library. If you are in the library but access the catalog from our website, your default location will be Farr.

If all the items listed on a resource are available for checkout, they will appear in the order listed above. However, if some of the items are checked out, the checked in items recieve priority in the display. For example, if I'm using a Carbon Valley PAC but the Carbon Valley item is checked out, I might see the Erie item first in the list followed by the Farr item. Thus, if you are using a PAC within a library, you can quickly see on the search results whether an item is currently available at that location.

Catalog Trick: I mentioned above that only the PACs within the library are assigned to that library's location. However, there is a way to trick the catalog into believing you are using one of those PACs. When performing a search in our catalog, the web address appears at the top of the browser. It usually is a jumble of letters and numbers that look something like this: http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&aspect=subtab240&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=weld&ri=2&source=~!horizon&index=.TS&term=birthday+cakes&x=0&y=0&aspect=subtab240. Within all this mess, there is a phrase that says "profile=weld". The profile is what tells the catalog which location it is searching from. In this case, "weld" stands for the profile that is accessed from the internet. By changing the profile code, you can change which location the catalog is associated with. For example, if I change the url to http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&aspect=subtab240&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=cvr&ri=2&source=~!horizon&index=.TS&term=birthday+cakes&x=0&y=0&aspect=subtab240, the catalog will show Carbon Valley's items first. Here's a quick list of the catalog web addresses for each location:

Monday, March 29, 2010

Notice: Libary Catalog May Be Unavailable March 30 from 5:30-7:00am

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog

WHEN:
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 from 5:30-7:00am

WHY:
Hardware repair.

DETAIL:
The catalog system needs to be taken offline for a hardware repair. During this process, all access to the catalog will be unavailable.

Friday, March 26, 2010

The order of search results - Keyword Indexes

Unfortunately, our library catalog isn't able to sort by relevancy. Instead, keyword search results show the newest resources first. For instance, if you do a Title Keyword search for Harry Potter, the catalog shows books such as The unofficial Harry Potter vocabulary builder and Political issues in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series before the actual Harry Potter books. This is because these other books also have the words "Harry Potter" in the title and are newer than the books from the Harry Potter series.

While publication date is the default sort for keyword indexes, the catalog also has the ability to sort by author, title, and media. The Author sort orders results by the author's last name. The Media sort attempts to order the search results by showing books first, followed by electronic resources, large print books, audio books, and videos. To change the default sort for a basic search, click the drop down menu labeled Sort by on the right side of the screen, choose the way you wish to sort, and click the arrow to re-order your results.

Quirk Alert: If you are using the Advanced Search, you must click Refine Search to change your sort order. If you forget and use the Sort by drop down menu on the same screen as your results, it will forget all the limits you specified on the advanced screen and change your results.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Order of Search Results - Alphabetical Indexes

Not surpringly, alphabetical search indexes return your search results ordered alphabetically. So, if I choose a Title - Alphabetical search for minority report, I will see a list of results that are alphabetically close to my search term. In this case, I see results such as Minority report, The minority report and other stories, and Minority vendors.

When sorting results, our catalog ignores the first word if it is a definite or indefinite article. This includes words such as a, an, and the. Thus, in the example above, our catalog ignores the the in The minority report and other stories and instead alphabtizes this resource by the next word, minority. The catalog also ignores any initial articles in the search query. As a result, searching for minority report and the minority report returns the same results.

Quirk Alert: Normally, ignoring the first word if it is an article doesn't create a problem for the searcher. However, let's say you are searching for a book about the letter A called A Book. Since A is referring to the letter A, it isn't an article. However, our catalog isn't smart enough to realize this so if you try searching for a book, it will return results for book. The easiest way to fix this when searching is to place another article in front of your search like this. Our catalog only ignores the first word it sees so adding two articles in front gives us our desired result.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Bibliographic and Item Records

There are an overwhelming number of terms used in libraryland. However, the two I use the most are "bib record" and "item record."

Bib Records
A bib record, or bibliographic record, is an entry in our catalog containing information about a specific resource such as a book or DVD. Here is an example of the bib record for a movie called Hero. In this case, the bib record displays title, subject, additional title, upc, performers, genre, language, description, and more. In our catalog, each edition of a resource receives its own bib record. For example, we have multiple bib records for The Da Vinci Code that include an unabridged audio book, mass market paperback, large print, hardcover 1st edition, special illustrated edition, and more.

Our catalog may display three different views of a bib record. The first is a summary screen that shows multiple bib records on one page. For example, here are the results for a title keyword search for The Da Vinci Code. On this screen you see only partial bib information that includes the title, author, publisher, and publication date. The second bib record view is called the "full bib record." Here is an example of a full bib record for a mass market edition of The Da Vinci Code. This is where you see much more extensive information about the book such as the subjects and any additional note fields. The final bib record view is called the MARC Display. You can access this view by going into the full bib record for any resource, scrolling down to the bottom of the page, and clicking the MARC Display link. Most people don't need the detail that the MARC display reveals which is why it is hidden by default.

Item Records
An item record contains information about one physical copy of a resource. In our catalog, this includes information about where to find a specific item such as which library it's at, what part of the library it should be shelved in, the call number, and whether or not it is currently on the shelf.

If you search our catalog using a keyword search, you will retrieve the bib summary view of the resources that match your search. In addition, you will see up to two items per title. However, the library may actually own significantly more than two copies. To see a complete list of libraries that own this book, you must click on the record's title to retrieve the full bib view and scroll down to the Copy/Holding information section toward the bottom of the page. For example, the paperback version of It Happened One Autumn is owned by the Farr, Lincoln Park, Erie, Ft Lupton Public and School, and Carbon Valley libraries. However, our initial search result only displayed Farr and Lincoln Park's items.

In my next post, I'll discuss how the catalog determines what order the bib and item records appear.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Notice: Libary Catalog May Be Unavailable March 15 from 7:30-8:30am

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog

WHEN:
March 15, 2010 from 7:30-8:30am

WHY:
Need to troubleshoot the library catalog system.

DETAIL:
The Library Catalog server is not accepting some changes that need to be made to the system. SirsiDynix, the catalog vendor, and I will be exploring the problem together. Once we identify the problem, the catalog will need to be restarted for the change to take effect. The restart should only take a couple of minutes and will occur sometime between 7:30-8:30am on Monday, March 15, 2010.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Stemming, Spell Check, and Wildcards

The High Plains Library District's catalog only retrieves results that exactly match your search terms. This is one reason it is very important that your search terms are spelled correctly. In addition, unlike many modern search engines, it doesn't support stemming 1.

While our catalog doesn't provide spell check or stemming, it does allow the use of wildcard characters. A wildcard character is a symbol that can be used in place of other letters. In our catalog, the wildcard characters are an asterisk, *, and a question mark, ?.

How do I use wildcard characters?
The asterisk is a multi-character wildcard. This means it matches zero or more letters. For example, if I submit a catalog search for infant*, the catalog will return results that match infant, infante, infants, infantry, and more.

The question mark is a single-character wildcard. It can be used to replace exactly one letter. If I submit a catalog search for infant?, the catalog will return results that match infants and infante but not records that only contain the words infant or infantry.

Why would I want to use wildcard characters?
Wildcard characters are useful when you wish to force the catalog to do basic stemming or are unsure of how to correctly spell a word. For example, let's say I heard someone talking about the recipient of the 2009 Newbery Medal but all I remember is that the title contains the words grave and book. Searching for grave book returns no results. However, grave* book reveals the book I'm looking for is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

Speaking of the Newbery Medal, I can never remember if Newbery should have one "r" or two. If I can't remember while I'm doing my catalog search, I can find results for both Newbery and Newberry by searching for newber*y medal.

Obviously, it would be easier if our catalog automatically returned the results we want. However, until we upgrade to a smarter catalog, using wildcards can be very helpful.

1Stemming is the process of finding the root word of your search term and retrieving results with the same root word. For example, if you search Google for the word cook, it may also return words such as cooks and cooking.

UPDATE: Our catalog still can't do stemming but our Did You Mean feature is finally live!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Library Catalog

The High Plains Library District owns a fantastic number of books, movies, music, and more. However, it can be tricky to search all these resources. The purpose of this blog is to offer tips on how to search the library catalog1. In addition, I will use it to announce features that have been recently added and ask for your feedback on a particular enhancement or problem.

What is the library catalog?
Library catalogs were created to find books, movies, and other resources that the library owns. The High Plains Library District currently owns over 700,000 physical items. That's a lot stuff to wade through simply to find one book or DVD. Before computers, information on these items were typed up and filed in card catalogs. However, most libraries have replaced their card catalogs with an Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) which is one part of a larger Integrated Library System (ILS).

What can I find in the library catalog?
The High Plains Library District catalog contains records for:

What won't I find in the library catalog?
The High Plains Library district subscribes to many online resources that cover a wide range of topics that include magazines such as Consumer Reports, online foreign language tutorials, and automotive repair. Unfortunately, our regular library catalog does not have the ability to search these databases. Instead, you can use our 360 Search to search for articles on a specific subject, our Journal Title Search to discover which magazines are available online or just browse our list of database resources.

In addition, the library catalog does not contain general information about the library such as location and hours. To find this information, visit our main website at http://www.mylibrary.us/ or go to our website search page.

1Note for library staff: Unless otherwise stated, when I refer to the "library catalog" in this blog, I am specifically referring to HIP, the patron catalog found on our PAC computers and via the internet.