Library News » Current Projects

Consolidated Search Interface

news — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:02:54 +0000

The consolidated Search Interface Committee Project is at a point in our project that we would like some input from subject librarians. We are working on developing a list of the types of uses our students and faculty make of the library web page resources. Would each of you submit to richard_Jensen@byu.edu, by the end of this week, Feb. 2nd, a list of the major types of questions you think or know students and faculty try to answer by using the resources on the Library Web Page. Questions such as finding electronic or print journals, finding call numbers for books, finding the stock market prices. We do NOT need an exhaustive list just the major ones that many students and faculty ask repeatedly; maybe the top 10 would be sufficient. We will take care of eliminating the duplicate types of questions.

Mac OS X Widget

news — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 03:48:18 +0000

Along the same lines as the Firefox toolbar we released a couple of months ago, we have now released a Dashboard widget to be used on Mac OS X. Widgets are simply “mini-applications that allow you to perform common tasks and provide you with fast access to information.” The HBLL widget allows you to quickly search library resources. You can choose to search the HBLL Catalog, Google Scholar, Journal Finder, or Quick Start (a collection of a few general databases to get you started).

As always, please leave us your comments on how we can improve this research tool.

Database Descriptions

news — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:32:29 +0000

If you go to any subject page you will notice that to the right of the database title there is a small blue “i” icon. If you click on the icon, a window pops up that gives you more information about that particular database. We suspect that very few people actually use this valuable resource. We are proposing the following 3 items as a way to make the database description information more readily accessible:

When you perform a search for a database (see the “Finding Databases” post), you would not only search by title, but you would also search through database descriptions. That way, if you are searching for a database about business but business was not in the title, it would hopefully show up in the search results because business was mentioned in the description.
Remove the blue “i” icon and replace it with something similar to what Netflix has. In Netflix, if you hover over a movie title a non-obtrusive pop-up gives you more information about that movie. We would like to have the same thing for our databases so that when you hover over the database title, a pop-up will give you more details about the database. We could include the database description, where the database is available (on/off campus) and provide links to a tutorial about how to use the database and the terms of use for the database.
Finally, to make sure the database descriptions are kept up-to-date, we have provided a way for subject librarians to easily update the descriptions of the databases for which they have responsibility.

Numbers 1 and 3 have already been implemented. We would like to implement #2 during January so please send us your comments and suggestions by January 19th so that we can use them as we move forward with this project.

Undergraduate Research Page

news — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:28:06 +0000

The library classes web page is being redesigned to provide more emphasis on research helps. We will change the focus of the library classes web page to highlight helpful research tools and guidance through the research process. An added feature will be an assignment calculator that lets students see how much time they will need to spend on each part of their paper to complete it by the deadline. If you would like to see an example of an assignment calculator please go to the University of Minnesota web page, http://www.lib.umn.edu/undergrad/

Students and faculty will be able to link from the “Undergraduate Research” page to a library classes web page with information for students and faculty in First Year Writing and Advanced writing. The pages will focus on requirements and procedures for the classes. We will also include the LIIL classroom schedule and advanced writing rolls on this page. Information for librarians will be moved to the intranet.

The Library Instruction committee will be directing the changes to these pages and their recommendations will be presented to the Web Working Group.

Databases A-Z List

news — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:34:59 +0000

The current “Databases A-Z” page lists all of the library’s databases in one long list. We are going to be testing different ways of displaying the databases on this page to 1) make the page load faster and 2) offer multiple ways of accessing databases so that you can pick the easiest one for your situation.

Current ideas include the following:

Keeping the search box at the top of the page and only displaying the databases that begin with A. You would then click on the appropriate letter to display databases that begin with letters other than A. You would also have the option of clicking on “ALL” to show all the databases.
Same as #1 above except default to not showing any databases. You would then click on the appropriate letter to display databases that begin with the letter of your choosing.
Same as #2 above but also include a way to search for databases by subject just like what is available on the library’s home page.

These 3 ideas are just examples of what we could do. If you would like to suggest something else, or place your vote for one of the ideas listed above, please comment on this post.

Quick Start Search Box

Tom DeForest — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:52:35 +0000

On the default view of our library homepage there is no search box. This creates a situation where a user must click before they can begin to search on their topic of interest. It also forces users to choose what kind of format they are looking for – journal or book.

We are developing a search box to be located on the first page that will be immediately available when the page loads and will search across the library catalog as well as all the databases that can be searched simultaneously (journals). A sample of the search box can be found at http://www.lib.byu.edu/index_refresh.php (Note: This page is under active development. Functionality may be intermittent.)