Re: [CODE4LIB] Usability evaluation of library online catalogues
White, H., Wright, T., and Chawner, B. 2006. Usability evaluation of library online catalogues. In Proceedings of the 7th Australasian User interface Conference - Volume 50 (Hobart, Australia, January 16 - 19, 2006). W. Piekarski, Ed. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, vol. 169. Australian Computer Society, Darlinghurst, Australia, 69-72. Money quote from abstract: The evaluation found severe usability problems with online catalogues--we found so many problems we were forced to use a card sorting technique to understand and classify the problems. If you want to read the article in fulltext: http://libra.msra.cn/paperdetail.aspx?id=2361959 cheers! Markus Fischer
Re: [CODE4LIB] OpenURL and DAIA
We are just starting to use DAIA for a small holdings register of journals holdings in connection with Vufind and the new DAIA-Driver in Vufind. Since the holdings register is not a big union-catalog, but rather a simple database in which you simply mark which Journal (ISSN) you have for which periode, we do send the requests by OpenURL, do some ISSN-Mapping and send back DAIA-responses. We will use that in connection with an open and cooperative reference database for nursing literature. DAIA works very fine for us. There should perhaps be an official way to request subsets of holdings and transport some information e.g. about ILL fees in DAIA (probably you can for the later in the limitation tag?). But we work around by combining that with IP-based requests. So we can do crazy stuff like showing institution specific availability in the overview of a search, and showing general availability in the details of a record. I think Jakob created with DAIA a simple an lightweighted solution to a real problem in the library world. Markus Jakob Voss schrieb: Owen wrote: Although part of the problem is that you might want to offer any service on the basis of an OpenURL the major use case is supply of a document (either online or via ILL) - so it strikes me you could look at DAIA http://www.gbv.de/wikis/cls/DAIA_-_Document_Availability_Information_API ? Jakob does this make sense? Just having read Joel Spolsky's article about Architecture Astronauts that Mike pointed to [1] I hesitate to propagate what you can all do with DAIA. But your use case makes sense if you want to offer services provided or mediated by a specific institution (such as a library) with a specific publication. Inspired by your idea to combine OpenURL and DAIA I update the DAIA perl library [2] and hacked a DAIA server that also understands some very limited OpenURL (it only knows books with ISBN): You can look up which library has a specific publication in the GBV library union by its identifier: http://ws.gbv.de/daia/gvk/?id=gvk:ppn:48574418X or by OpenURL http://ws.gbv.de/daia/gvk/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:bookrft.isbn=0-471-38393-7 Have a look at the simple source code of this script at http://daia.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/daia/trunk/daiapm/examples/gvk.pl?view=markup I want to stress that this demo DAIA server does not use the full expression power of DAIA, in fact it does not provide any availability information at at - but you hopefully get the concept. Cheers Jakob [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog18.html [2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/daia/files/DAIA-0.27.tar.gz
Re: [CODE4LIB] WorldCat as an OpenURL endpoint ?
Kyle Banerjee schrieb: This might not be as bad as people think. The normal argument is that holdings are in free text and there's no way staff will ever have enough time to record volume level holdings. However, significant chunks of the problem can be addressed using relatively simple methods. For example, if you can identify complete runs, you know that a library has all holdings and can start automating things. That's what we've done for journal holdings (only) in https://sourceforge.net/projects/doctor-doc/ Works perfect in combination with an EZB-account (rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit) as a linkresolver. May be as exact as on issue level. The tool is beeing used by around 100 libraries in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. If you check this one out: Don't expect the perfect OS-system. It has been developped by me (head of library and no IT-Professional) and a colleague (IT-Professional). I learned a lot through this one. There is plenty room for improvement in it: some things implemented not yet so nice, other things done quite nice ;-) If you want to discuss, use or contribute: https://sourceforge.net/projects/doctor-doc/support Very welcome! Markus Fischer While my comments are mostly concerned with journal holdings, similar logic can be used with monographic series as well. kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] A to Z lists
The cheapest and best A to Z list i know is the german EZB: http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=Acolors=7lang=en This list is maintained by hunderds of libraries. You just mark those journals you have licensed and that's it. Not very widely known: they do also provide an API which you can use as a free linkresolver. There are free tools you can plug into this API and you've got your linkresolver. The list is incredible accurate and you'll have almost no effort: any change made by one library is valid for all. Let me know if you need more information. Markus Fischer Am 16.02.2011 22:18, schrieb Michele DeSilva: Hi Code4Lib-ers, I want to chime in and say that I, too, enjoyed the streaming archive from the conference. I also have a question: my library has a horribly antiquated A to Z list of databases and online resources (it's based in Access). We'd like to do something that looks more modern and is far more user friendly. I found a great article in the Code4Lib journal (issue 12, by Danielle Rosenthal Mario Bernado) about building a searchable A to Z list using Drupal. I'm also wondering what other institutions have done as far as in-house solutions. I know there're products we could buy, but, like everyone else, we don't have much money at the moment. Thanks for any info or advice! Michele DeSilva Central Oregon Community College Library Emerging Technologies Librarian 541-383-7565 mdesi...@cocc.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] EZB
No english documentation to my knowledge. If you want to become a member of the EZB you pay a small fee for their infrastructure and their staff maintaing the database. It's around 500 EUR a year. Very valuable! I am not aware of an API that let's you synchronize holdings registration automatically. Intersting idea anyhow. But you may do an export of your holdings, so this may work in the other direction. For a subset of the EZB members (for all those also using the ZDB) its is even possible to get in addition the availability of their print holdings. I am Switzerland based and the ZDB is not open to the world unfortunately. ZDB http://dispatch.opac.d-nb.de/DB=1.1/ But the EZB is open to any library in the world. Weak point is the UI has a german bias (e.g. comments), although there is an english UI. But you can live with that, specially if you create your own application using the API. Markus Am 17.02.2011 18:10, schrieb Jonathan Rochkind: No documentation in English, huh? This is a very interesting service I had not previously been aware of, indeed quite powerful. It's free for libraries to register their own holdings with EZB? Even American libraries? Does the API by chance cover that registration of holdings too, so software could take holdings tracked in some internal database, and register them with EZB automatically? Jonathan On 2/17/2011 11:43 AM, Markus Fischer wrote: Linking is dependent on the request and the technical possibilities of the targeted publisher. Very often on article level. Were not possible on journal level. The things the EZB can't do is resolve identifiers like PMIDs, DOIs, SICI numbers. But you can do that easily by writing your own application or you my application I did write for this purpose: http://sourceforge.net/projects/doctor-doc/ (use SVN for best results). The API of the services of the EZB/ZDB is located here: http://services.d-nb.de/fize-service/gvr/full.xml?sid=nameMe:myOrganisationgenre=articleissn=0392-4203date=2004 You may extend that to article level (try another journal). Result 0 = free accessible Result 1 = partially free accessible (fuzziness because of a not specific request, e.g. missing year) Result 2 = licensed Result 3 = partially licensed Result 4 = not licensed Result 5 = Journal found, but the year specified is outside of the published range) Result 10 = unknown You'll find a german documentation here: http://www.zeitschriftendatenbank.de/fileadmin/user_upload/ZDB/pdf/services/JOP_Dokumentation_XML-Dienst.pdf They state that you should contact the EZB/ZDB to register your sid (Vendor-ID:Database-ID) if you want to use this service: johann.rolschew...@sbb.spk-berlin.de Markus PS: the data of the EZB isn't available for download, as far as I know. But the EZB is for sure one of the best things libraries ever have achieved and maintain... Am 17.02.2011 17:25, schrieb Ross Singer: On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Jonathan Rochkindrochk...@jhu.edu wrote: Interesting, does their link resolver API do article-level links, or just journal title level links? I/you/one could easily write a plugin for Umlaut for their API, would be an interesting exersize. I think it would also be interesting to make the data available for download/reuse, if possible. -Ross. On 2/17/2011 1:18 AM, Markus Fischer wrote: The cheapest and best A to Z list i know is the german EZB: http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=Acolors=7lang=en This list is maintained by hunderds of libraries. You just mark those journals you have licensed and that's it. Not very widely known: they do also provide an API which you can use as a free linkresolver. There are free tools you can plug into this API and you've got your linkresolver. The list is incredible accurate and you'll have almost no effort: any change made by one library is valid for all. Let me know if you need more information. Markus Fischer Am 16.02.2011 22:18, schrieb Michele DeSilva: Hi Code4Lib-ers, I want to chime in and say that I, too, enjoyed the streaming archive from the conference. I also have a question: my library has a horribly antiquated A to Z list of databases and online resources (it's based in Access). We'd like to do something that looks more modern and is far more user friendly. I found a great article in the Code4Lib journal (issue 12, by Danielle Rosenthal Mario Bernado) about building a searchable A to Z list using Drupal. I'm also wondering what other institutions have done as far as in-house solutions. I know there're products we could buy, but, like everyone else, we don't have much money at the moment. Thanks for any info or advice! Michele DeSilva Central Oregon Community College Library Emerging Technologies Librarian 541-383-7565 mdesi...@cocc.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] distributed library alpha server up, feedback welcome
Hi Elliot congrats, you did it! Wish you all the best for the further development! Markus Am 23.04.2011 23:27, schrieb Elliot Hallmark: All, It was at the end of last year that I came here saying I was writing an open source ILS for a distributed (book sharing) library. While I had lots of enthusiasm and time for it at the time, our development computer didn't have the capacity to run a solr based discovery front end. Even though the back end was ready for feedback (though still very alpha), I dallied in posting the IP because there was no discovery layer. In the interest of moving forward, and since a complex discovery layer may not be necessary for a while (not for 100 books), here is the IP. Please check it out and give feed back. Play around with whatever, this data isn't real. http://72.48.75.76 If this IP changes, I'll let y'all know on this thread. Soon I would like to use this system at our private alternative schoolhttp://www.clearviewsudburyschool.orgin hopes that it would facilitate folks letting us use their excellent books, since they would be lending them, not donating them. Having a database keeping track of who owns the books would give a little peace of mind. in the future, setting up a network of libraries would be easy. notes: 1. This is a distributed library, where a book enters the system through a primal loan (from owner to library), and is due back at some point. The book or item can be further lent to a regular borrower, or to another library (which inherits lending privilages). extending lending privilages must be done through the administrative back end, so it wouldn't happen accidentally. 2. The discovery layer is severely crippled because I don't want to write a indexer for our MARC records unless it becomes necessary (ie, better searching is needed but writing a VuFind driver or integrating with Kochief isn't yet feasible). All books entered in this system also have MARC records associated with them, so a solr or other front end can be added later. 3. If you'd like to try uploading a MARC record, email it to me and I'll put it up for anyone to enter through the cataloging app. 4. This is written in django. Hooray for python! 5. This is not at all perfect yet. here is my todolist so far (please add to it): when checking a book out, do not allow a due date later than the current lease on the book. subtitle, does this really need to be limited to 100 characters? create an end of day script that: sends emails to books that are due back soon sends emails to books that are overdue activate fines model and add an Fine.calcuate() method make a legit zipcode field. current one accepts5 digits thanks for reading, Elliot
