RSS Feeds (and Email Newsletter) of New Titles

Prior to our catalog upgrade last November our borrowers could subscribe to RSS feeds in order to see a list of new titles. Unfortunately, with our upgrade this feature was broken. Instead of choosing to write custom code that might possibly break again the next time we upgraded, we have decided to subscribe to a service from Wowbrary. In addition to providing RSS feeds of new items, Wowbrary also allows our borrowers to subscribe to a weekly email newsletter.

What does Wowbrary look like?
To see an example of what the newsletter looks like, click here. As you can see, it first lists the "top choices," based on its Amazon ranking, and then provides links on the left to find titles within a specific subject area. If you wish to subscribe to the weekly email newsletter, click here, click the radio button to choose High Plains Library district, and then enter your email twice. The newsletter and RSS feeds are updated weekly on Wednesday mornings.

You can also subscribe to specific subject areas via RSS. Click here to see the RSS categories (it may take a minute or two to completely load).

What's the Difference between Wowbrary and NextReads
High Plains Library District also subscribes to a newsletter/rss service called NextReads. At first glance, it may seem similar to Wowbrary but it has a different focus. Wowbrary's only purpose is to provide patrons with a list of titles we have ordered in the last week. The upside is every single title that Wowbrary lists is already in our catalog. NextReads doesn't limit itself to only items we own. However, one of the advantages NextReads has over Wowbrary is the bottom section of the newsletter features good older books that may not be getting the attention they deserve.

What's the implementation timeline?
This month we're focusing on introducing Wowbrary to staff as well as testing to make sure it works the way we expect. However, please feel free to pass this information on to anyone you think would find it interesting. At the moment, we're planning an official launch of Wowbrary to the public sometime in August.

I've had a lot of fun looking through the new items this morning and have already placed several requests for new books. If you decide to try out the email newsletter or RSS links, send me an email or post a comment letting me know what you think about it.

Browse Books via Lexile Measures

On Sunday I turned on a new feature, provided by LibraryThing, in our online catalog that allows our borrowers to browse books via Lexile Measures.

Lexile measures are one way to estimate how easy a book is to read. It is important to note that this measure is only intended to indicate how complicated the book is to read, not whether or not the subject matter is appropriate or interesting for a certain age group. Lexile measures do not correspond directly to specific grade levels. However, Lexile.com does provide a chart of "typical Lexile ranges" for each grade level.

To see an example of a Lexile measure, search for Zen Ties by Jon J Muth. If it exists, the reading level appears in the left column under series info or the professional review links. In this case, the Lexile measure is 460L. To see other books with the same Lexile level, click on the 460L link. A small window will pop up with other books that fall into this category. You can then click on the links for those books to get more information.

In addition to browsing books that exactly match your current book, you can also browse a range of Lexile measures. To do this, click on the 460L link as before. When the window pops open, you'll see sliders at the top that indicate the minimum and maximum measures that you wish to display. Click on the sliders, move them to your desired level range, and then click the Search button. Note: It may take several seconds for large search ranges to return results.

It is not necessary to first look up a book before browsing the Lexile measures. I've also added a link to this feature on our Advanced Search page. Below the text boxes and above the limits there is a link that says, "Click for Lexile Reading Level Search." If you click on this, a window will pop up similar to what happens when you click a reading measure link within a book's record. Like above, click on the sliders to move them to your desired range and then click the Search button. Note: There is a slight problem with how I implemented this box so if the first time you click the link the window doesn't pop up, wait a couple of seconds and try it again. I'll be researching ways to resolve this nagging problem.

Unfortunately, at this time there isn't a way to combine the Lexile browse with any other search criteria. Also, I have heard reports that some of our catalog-only computers within the library are having trouble with the sliding feature. I'm working on figuring out what the problem is and seeing if there is a solution.

You can read LibraryThing's official announcement here or read about their initial implementation in their personal catalog product.

What do you think of this new feature? Do you think the Lexlie Reading Level Search" link would be better on some other page than the advanced search?

"New At the Library" Changes

Our patron catalog has several tabs and subtabs. One of the "Books, DVDs, CDs . . ." subtab is labeled New at the Library. This subtab provides a list of searches for borrowers to easily see the new items we have within specific genres and subjects.

Last week, one of our librarians asked me to run a report of our most popular genres and subjects for a post she is planning for our Facebook page. This is one of my favorite type of reports to do :) I ran it and then, upon looking at the most popular non-fiction subject headings, realized that our "New Non-Fiction" section didn't reflect what people are checking out.

Below is a list of the new categories that have either been expanded or added to the "New Non-Fiction" links:

• Colorado Guidebooks
• Crafts
• Drawing
• Exercise and Fitness
• Job Hunting and Careers
• Knitting, Crocheting, and More
• Parenting
• Personal Finance
• Pregnancy
• Relationships
• Self-Improvement and Living Well
• Weight Loss and Health

When you have a chance, take a look and let me know what you think.

As an aside, I love that we have a Star Wars Craft Book :)

Note: If you are using a non-Internet Explorer browser, you may see that the columns don't line up correctly on the "New at the Library" page. This is a known bug with our vendor. I'm planning to delve in to the code and hopefully fix that soon.

"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.

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.

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.