Solutions Solicitation
November 20, 2006
If you’ve ever thought, “It would be great if the library website could…”, then keep reading.
We’re taking input for ways to improve our library website. Our goal is to, “Implement new tools, methods, and practices that promote fast and easy information retrieval for students, faculty, and other researchers”. If you’ve got the next blockbuster idea ready to burst out of your cranium, by all means, post a comment below and let us know what it is. We welcome all ideas, large and small.
I don’t know how to fix this because I don’t know very much about how such systems work, but searching for library materials is very difficult. A lot of materials don’t even seem to be listed in the online catalogue, so generally when I’m doing research I have to search and search to find even one book on a certain subject, and then I go to that area of the library and find two shelves of books about the subject that don’t show up in the catalogue. Also, sometimes I search for a book by title and nothing comes up, and then I search by the author and the book magically appears. When my husband needs a certain book and can’t find it in the catalogue, he’ll request it through interlibrary loan, and they’ll send him a nasty email back telling him to look in the catalogue, but also giving the book’s call number. Often this is the only way he can get the book’s call number because it doesn’t show up in the online catalogue. But if interlibrary loan has access to records about the book, there should be a way to make those same records show up when other students search for it.
Changing subjects, since there’s a system in place to automatically email students a week or so before their library books are due, why not automatically send out another email the day the books are due. An email a week in advance is a nice reminder but quickly forgotten. A email the day the books are actually due would remind students to return or renew the books on the very day they need to do something about it, so the due date is fresh in their mind at the moment they need to take action.
I want the library to know that I have been at BYU for two years, and I have perfected my library search process. First, I search for the book on Amazon.com. Every book always comes up on Amazon.com, while for some reason only about one out of every ten books comes up on the library catalogue. Then, I get the ISBN number off of Amazon. Then, since there is no option to search for a book in the library catalogue by ISBN, I am forced to put the ISBN on the ILL request form and request the book. They are always very good about sending me a judgmental email, telling me to stop requesting books which are already in the BYU library. Happily, they always send me the reference. Where they get it from, I don’t know, but until the catalogue is significantly improved, I am forced to continue harassing them.
Actually, Peter, you can search by ISBN.
Under the “Books” tab on the main page, just type the ISBN into the Keyword box (without any dashes) and it’ll find it.
What would be nice is an alternate-edition ISBN search, so if the library doesn’t have the particular edition you have the ISBN for, it would automatically check to see if there are any other editions of the book. (When an ISBN search turns up blank, I often can’t help but wonder if it’s just that the library doesn’t have that particular edition. And then I go do a keyword search.)
I wonder if it’s really necessary to have two search boxes on the front page (under “Books”, that is). If you haven’t already done so, maybe you can run some statistical analysis on the server logs and see which of the two is used more frequently. If the results are roughly equal, then perhaps it’s better to keep the two; if the results are heavily skewed one way or the other, though, I’d recommend keeping the more popular search and relegate the other one to a separate page.
Another thought: to simplify matters, perhaps you could use quote marks to switch to alphabetic search (e.g., “war and peace”); if there aren’t any quote marks, then default to keyword. The simpler, the better. (It’s good how the advanced keyword search is tucked away on its own page for those who do need it, but safely out of the way of the 80% who don’t.)
Finally, kudos for having a blog and an RSS feed.
Because Ben mentioned an alternate-edition ISBN search, I thought I would mention a service by OCLC. If you enter the following URL (http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/liblook?baseURL=http://catalog.lib.byu.edu&opacID=sirsi9&isbn=), followed by the ISBN (no dashes), a search will be performed for all alternate-edition ISBNs within the Harold B. Lee Library.
An alternative to this is to use a Firefox toolbar that I created that will perform this search for you automatically from within Amazon.com. The toolbar can be downloaded from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1799/.
I would like to see this searching ability more tightly integrated with the current catalog but until that happens the OCLC service is available.
This has nothing to do with the website, but I would love it if there was some way the library could be made quiet again! There’s a guy talking on his cell phone right next to me, there are people talking at the table across from me, people making so much noise in the nearby study rooms that I can hear them out here. And I’m not even in the “No Shhh Zone”!
Just had to rant about that somewhere. Thanks for the cool blog and the desire to make the library website even better. An actual idea for the website would be to get the Zotero firefox extension to work with the HBLL website again. See http://www.zotero.org. Maybe the problem is that I’m using linux?
Thanks
Sorry, that’s http://www.zotero.org without a period on the end
This isn’t really a website thing either (at least I don’t think so), but it would be really nice if the displays in the entrance which show computer availability wouldn’t go into screensaver mode every three seconds. Just as I get there, they blink off for two or three seconds. It’s not the end of the world, of course, but it is mildly frustrating, especially because it’s hard to tell at a glance which area to look for.
Recommendation #1: Is the screensaver necessary? All it does is say “BYU Library,” and I think anyone who’s inside the library already knows where they are.
Leave the displays on all the time.
Recommendation #2: The current ordering of free spots in the labs is hard to grok because there’s no grouping. Group them by floor (not by size), and put spaces in between each floor. (How big the lab is doesn’t really matter; what does is where the lab is and how many seats are free. That’s what needs to be emphasized.)
Recommendation #3: Because people don’t care how many seats are taken up, but rather how many seats are free, the red bars just get in the way and make it hard to find what you’re looking for. They should be muted.
Here’s a quick proof-of-concept I threw together in Photoshop:
This is obviously simplified a great deal, but maybe there’s value in simple. (The bars on the right could be shortened and more detail on which computers are free could be put there.) Anyway, if you can pass this on to whoever’s in charge of it, that’d be great. Thanks!
The image didn’t go through, but you can see it here:
http://www.blankslate.net/upload/LabDisplay.png
Josh, what problem are you having with Zotero? We have some Linux users here and might be able to troubleshoot the problem if you could describe it.
Ben, the screensaver is there to reduce burn in on the screens. The availability images burn in really quickly.
I like your idea on the availability screens and will look into the possibility of customizing the display.
Ah, good point. Does the screensaver need to be mostly black to prevent burn-in? If not, then maybe you could replace it with the same availability data but in a different style (maybe a map of where computers are in the library, for all five floors, set out horizontally). That way it’s not dead time, and it wouldn’t be quite so frustrating.