HPLD Search Tips

Searching Our Patron Catalog: Fun with Special Characters!

2013-11-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes our patron catalog makes me question my sanity. Today, I was reading an interview on Public Libraries Online with Joshilyn Jackson about her newest book, Someone Else’s Love Story. It looked interesting so I copied the title, from the website, and then pasted it into our catalog. Our catalog claimed we didn't have it which I thought was odd. I went to Amazon, found the ISBN, came back to our search, and pasted the ISBN into the ISBN index. This time our catalog did find the book. Why?

I examined the title again. It looked the same as what I had typed in. I came up with a hypothesis: perhaps our catalog had trouble searching single quotes. I pasted the title in again and substituted an asterisk instead of a single quote like this: Someone Else*s Love Story . This time it worked! I erased the asterisk and typed a single quote in just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Wait, it worked with the single quote also. I copied the title again, and once again it didn't work. I stared at the screen in frustration.

Finally, I found the problem. It turns out that our catalog has absolutely no problem searching for titles where you use the single quote that appears on your keyboard ('). What it can't do is use right single quotes (’). Look closely, can you see the difference?

Single Quote	Right Single Quote
'	’

So the moral of the story is, if you copy and paste something into our catalog and retrieve no results, makes sure your copy source didn't use special single/double quotes. If it did, erase that part and retype it using your keyboard.

As an aside, we're hoping to move to a new ILS system next year. I double checked and this particular problem should not be an issue in our new system.

Finding eBooks in our Catalog

2013-04-23T10:26:00.000-06:00

Over a year without a single post . . . As you can tell, I've been spending less time working on catalog search tips. We're currently in the process of looking for a new integrated library system (ILS). Perhaps once we've selected our new ILS I'll start posting more again.

However, today's topic is finding eBooks within our catalog. At the moment, our library district subscribes to two ebook vendors: Overdrive and Axis360. We've been using Overdrive for years now and the product works pretty well. However, I personally find epub picture books are often formatted poorly. For instance, the picture may appear on one page but you have to swipe to the next page to see the text. Axis360, on the other hand, is a fairly new product. I find its interface still has quite a few quirks. However, the picture books look gorgeous on my iPad when I use the Blio format.

Searching for eBooks by Subject
Most people probably search for eBooks by going to Overdrive's or Axis360's site directly. The upside to doing it this way is you can immediately tell whether or not the book is available. However, I haven't had very good luck when I'm searching for a specific genre of book. For instance, the other weekend, I was looking for Christian Fiction books on Overdrive's site. I went to the Advanced Search, clicked the Subject drop-down menu and chose Christian Fiction. I got 24 results. That didn't sound right to me.

This same search can be done via HIP, our catalog. Go to http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ and choose the Advanced Search. Click the first drop down box and choose Subject Keyword then type "Christian Fiction". Then, under the Format limit, chose "Books - eBooks, Downloadable" and click the red arrow to search. This time I get 187 results which sounds more realistic. Choosing the "Books - eBooks, Downloadable" format option will retrieve both our Overdrive and Axis360 ebook collections. However, if you have a preference, you can change the search to get just one or the other.

To retrieve eBooks from a specific vendor, go back to the Advanced search page and enter your search terms like we did before. However, this time change the second drop down box to be General Keyword and then next to it type "Overdrive" or "Axis360" (without spaces), depending on which vendor results you want. I'm going to specify Overdrive books. This time you can see that I've retrieved about 167 results.

Searching for Picture eBooks
Picture books usually get lumped into the "juvenile" subject headings, even within our catalog. However, the audience for Boy + Bot is significantly different than the audience for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I find it very tiresome to wade through all the "juvenile fiction" results looking for ebooks that might be picture books. However, the advanced search in our catalog has the ability to limit to "easy" ebooks*.

As I mentioned above, while the Axis360 interface is still quirky, I do like the Blio format it provides better for picture books. I'm going on a plane trip next week and need a way to keep my 4-year-old son occupied. As a result, I want a list of all picture books available from Axis360. First, I go to the catalog's Advanced Search page. I click the drop down box and choose General Keyword and then type Axis360. Next, I go to the format limit and select "Books - eBooks, Downloadable." Finally, under Audience I choose "Children - Easy" and click the red search arrow. My search returns 143 results.

As I mentioned before, the downside to searching for eBooks via our catalog is you have to click on the vendor link before you know whether or not it's available for immediate checkout. I'm hoping our next catalog will have better integration so it's no longer necessary to choose between specific subject/audience searches and limiting to "available now" items. Until then, I go directly to the vendor sites when I need books that are immediately available and usually search through our catalog when I'm looking for specific subjects or picture books.

*UPDATE: I should mention that I have tried the grade level facets on Overdrive's site and find it works reasonably well for picture books. My main complaint is, as far as I can tell, there isn't a way to start out doing a grade level browse. I have to first enter some sort of search query and at that point can narrow it by grade level. I've also tried Axis360 grade level search and personally find it a bit tricky to use. However, that could just be me.

UPDATED: Browse Tags

2012-04-15T12:14:00.006-06:00

UPDATED: I was informed of a problem with the tags that should now be fixed. Now, once you click on a tag, you should also be able to click on the book title and go straight to our catalog record for that item.

I'm testing out a new feature from LibraryThing on the public catalog. It's called "Browse by Tags". In prior posts I've talked about tags from LibraryThing. However, up till now, you had to go to a full bib record in order to see them.

This new feature is available from the Basic Search page. Underneath the search box there is now a link to "Browse by Tags." If you click it, you see a quick summary of some of the most prevelant tags that have been applied to our collection. To see more tags, click the 250, 500, or 1000 links.

In addition to browsing tags, you can search for new tags. This search box works the same way the tag search box works in the full bib. To search for the intersection between multiple tags, seperate them by commas. For example, I might search for historical mystery, regency. Or, to exclude items with specific tags, put two dashes in front of the tag. So, if I wanted a historical regency mystery but didn't want it to include any Jane Austen charaters, I might search for historical mystery, regency, --Jane Austen.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I'm just testing this feature out. Whether or not it stays depends on whether you think it's worthwhile. So, let me know what you think.

Subject Headings are (Usually) Plural

2011-10-11T13:00:00.005-06:00

When you search for subject headings in our catalog, always assume that the subject heading is plural.

I just ran across a case where someone, I have no idea who, did a general keyword search for "bildungsroman." If this was a library borrower rather than a staff person, I'm very impressed. When I first started working at the library, I had to look up the term.

Unfortunately, a general keyword search for bildungsroman only returns 5 results. A subject keyword search is even worse, returning no results. Why? It's because our subject headings use the plural form, bildungsromans. All it would have taken for this searcher to retrieve 1,974 results was to add a little s at the end of the word.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty common problem. I've seen quite a few searches fail, including some of my own, because the search query was in the singular form. At some point, we might get a discovery layer* which hopefully will be smart enough to return results for many of these cases. Until then, if you're not using the Advanced Search page, you can try the Subject Alphabetical index which, depending on the term, may provide a hint on whether you should search for the singular or plural form of a word. If you are still intent on using the keyword searches, please, unless you know otherwise, try the plural form first.

* A discovery layer is an interface that sits on top of our catalog and searches the way our catalog should in the first place. This usually includes things such as spell check, relevancy ranking, basic stemming and more. It also often has the ability to integrate, at least to a limited extent, with our databases and other online resources.

Catalog URL Structure

2011-09-16T13:53:00.005-06:00

Last month we added a permanent link feature for our catalog. I've used this quite a bit since adding it. Hopefully, it's useful to more people than just me :) In any case, while I find the permanent link helpful, it doesn't always do everything I want. Below is a rundown of the URL structure in the catalog as well as some tips about how to get different results.

There are a couple of different types of links you can create in our catalog.

Search Links
Title Links

Search Links

Here's an example of what a typical search link looks like:
http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1WH618765K260.78924&menu=search&aspect=subtab240&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=weld&ri=&index=.TS&term=home+staging&x=0&y=0&aspect=subtab240

Much of this information can be deleted. However, there are six elements that a basic search link should contain:

Description	Code	Example
Base URL	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?
The library code that should be used	&profile=	&profile=weld
Which search menu is used	&menu=	&menu=search
Which search subtab you're using	&aspect=	&aspect=subtab240
The search index	&index=	&index=.ts
The search term (no spaces, use + instead)	&term=	&term=home+staging

If you do an advanced search, such as this one there are some additional elements that are required:

Description	Code	Example
Which search subtab you're using (different than basic search)	&aspect=	&aspect=subtab242
Boolean operators if multiple indexes are used	&oper=	&oper=AND
Which limit box and limits are used	&limitbox_2	&limitbox_3=CO01+%3D+wld_en+or+CO01+%3D+wld_jn
How to sort the results	&sort=	&sort=310014

In addition, there are a couple of ways you can change the URL and make it act differently:

Description	Code	Example
Determine how many results show*	&npp=	&npp=100
Show an XML-like display (need to manually add at the end of the URL)	&GetXML=	&GetXML=true

* I've gotten reports that this option may not work for everyone so let me know if it doesn't work for you.

Title Links
In most cases, the Permanent Link option in the catalog will meet your needs. However, it is also possible to manually create direct title links. Direct title links are most often created using ISBN/ISSN, UPC Exact Match, Bib Number, or Bib Control Number - Exact Match. To create these types of links, many of the same elements appear as in the search URL.

Description	Code	Example
Base URL	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?
The library code that should be used (optional)	&profile=	&profile=weld
The search index	&index=	&index=ISBNEX
The number	&term=	&term=0783274068

If you choose to include a library code, it will show the items for that library first if the item is currently checked in.

When creating a direct link, first decide which index you want to use. Then, find the identifying number to use. The index is put in the &index= element and the number is put after the &term element.

Description	Code	Example
ISBN/ISSN	&index=ISBNEX	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0783274068
UPC	&index=UPCEX	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=UPCEX&term=678149013122
Bib Number	&index=BIB	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=BIB&term=965252
Bib Control Number	&index=CNTRLEX	http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=CNTRLEX&term=ocm50841487

Adding to "New at the Library"

2011-08-21T12:19:00.005-06:00

I've made a couple of changes to our New at the Library catalog page.

Added a "New Spanish" section
Renamed "New DVD" to "New Movie & TV" and added links to new Blu-ray and TV Series
Added YA Non-fiction and Audiobook links to the "New YA" section
Reordered everything to make the expanded options fit better in two columns

I've also made a minor change to the Advanced search page. There is no longer an "All" category for locations, formats, audience, and new items. It was getting too hard to keep the collection codes straight. Instead, if you wish to deselect a limit after you've already clicked on it, hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard and click on the limit you wish to remove.

Sorry, could not find anything matching

2011-08-15T11:05:00.007-06:00

I was reading posts on my romance listserv this morning and someone mentioned that Carola Dunn wrote a mystery series set in the 1960s. The poster had read the second book in the series, A Colourful Death, and thought it was interesting. I've enjoyed Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple series so thought I'd look this one up and give it a try.

I started with an Author - Alphabetical search but quickly wimped out when I saw there were 43 titles by Dunn. Then, I decided it would be faster to do a title search for "A Colorful Death" and then use the series info on the left side of the page to figure out the first book.

When I did a Title Keyword search for a colorful death, I got no results. At first, I was worried we might not have it. Then, I decided adding the article a to the phrase was a mistake since catalogs often ignore articles if it's the first word of a title. I changed my search to just "colorful death" and was taken to the correct record!

I was excited and decided I needed to write a post warning everyone about including initial articles when doing a phrase search. Except . . . that wasn't the reason my search worked. The real reason my first title keyword search hadn't returned anything was because I had used the US spelling for "colorful" instead of the UK spelling of "colourful." If I had searched for "A Colourful Death", I would have seen that we actually had two editions of that book. The only reason my second title keyword search returned anything was because "colorful death" was listed as an Additional Title in the MARC record for that specific edition.

The moral of the story is to always double check your spelling when the catalog doesn't return the results you want. Even though we now have a Did You Mean feature, it's not going to catch every error that I make.

Several years ago I ran across a fantastic article about The Seven Deadly Nyms. It lists several other ways to accidentally mess up your search results. While search engines and catalogs continue to evolve, they still tend to return the results we asked for, not the results we want.

More Changes

2011-08-09T12:43:00.005-06:00

Wow, it's been busy this summer. This Sunday I made a couple of different changes to the catalog.

Permanent Link
I've added a "permanent link" option to the catalog. This link is in the full bib view for a title and is located on the bottom left side right above the "MARC Display" link.

Why do you care? Currently, the link that appears in the address bar is very long and unwieldy. For example, this is the original URL for Jennifer Crusie's book Faking It:
http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=131R91I5819K0.9033&profile=weld&source=~!horizon&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001~!921724~!6&ri=1&aspect=subtab240&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=faking+it&index=.TS&uindex=&aspect=subtab240&menu=search&ri=1
As you can see, it's horrible. This is the shortened permanent link for the title: http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0312284683.

This feature is still in testing so there are a couple of caveats. First, when possible, I have the catalog connect using the title's ISBN. This is a slightly more stable number than the bib number. If the ISBN doesn't exist, it next looks for a UPC (many movies and music CDs don't have ISBNs). However, it turns out that multiple products could have the same UPC. See this link for an example. I'm still debating with myself if I'll keep the UPC search as an option. If it doesn't have either an ISBN or a UPC it will use the "search URI" link. I'll probably continue tinkering with this over the next couple of weeks to refine it but the general concept should work.

Please let me know what you think of it and if you run into any problems trying to use it.

New collection code for Overdrive eBooks
Tech services has added a new collection code for Overdrive eBooks. This means that you can now search for eBooks separate from Audio eBooks. To limit to Audio eBooks, go to the Advanced search page and then under the Format box highlight Books - Audio eBooks. To search for just eBooks, follow the same steps except highlight Books - eBooks.

Note: we have eBooks from a variety of different vendors including Overdrive, Safari, and Netlibrary. Books from Safari tend to be technology related while Overdrive books tend to be newer than the Netlibrary books. So, if you just want books from a particular vendor, you can enter "overdrive" or "safari" as a General Keyword search and use it in combination with the eBook limit.

New Electronic Resource Images
We found that some borrowers were confused by the records for electronic books showing up in the catalog. To try to make it clearer, we've added images that say, "Get Audio eBook Now", "Connect Now", or "Get eBook Now" along with the direct link to access these resources. You can see examples here:

Audio eBook - A Hat Full of Sky
Safari eBook - Using iPhone
Overdrive eBook - The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

As always, let me know if you have any questions about any of these.

RSS Feeds (and Email Newsletter) of New Titles

2011-07-13T09:24:00.004-06:00

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.

Search for Subtitles and Captions

2011-07-10T11:13:00.007-06:00

Recently, I was forwarded a question from one of our borrowers asking how to search for subtitled and captioned DVDs in English. This is a good question but one I had never thought of before. After a little bit of searching, I discovered that there is a Library of Congress subject heading labeled Video Recordings for the Hearing Impaired. While this isn't a complete list of all appropriate videos, it is a good start.

However, if you click on the Video Recordings for the Hearing Impaired subject heading, you see that this retrieves both DVD and VHS formats. To get only DVD results, we can use the catalog's Advanced Search page.

Once on the Advanced Search page, click the drop down arrow by Title Keyword and change it to Subject Keyword
Type "hearing impaired" in the box next to it. Make sure to include quotes because we want this exact phrase
Scroll down under the Format limit box and select Video Recording - DVD (Hint: select multiple format options by holding down the ctrl key while you click all the desired formats)
Click the Red Arrow to start your search

Unfortunately, this is a large enough result set that the catalog cannot sort it. In this case, the best option is probably to narrow the search further by entering additional title, author, or subject keywords or by using additional limits. For instance, we could refine our search by selecting New DVDs using the New limit box.

At the moment, I'm exploring if there's another way to make this information available. Those of you who have taken cataloging may remember that 041 $j is suppose to contain subtitle and caption information. However, there are a couple of problems that need to be addressed if/when we decide to go this route. For now, the subject keyword search is our best option.

3 Advanced Search Limit Changes

2011-06-26T13:35:00.007-06:00

This Sunday I added a new mp3 format to the advaced search page as well as making it possible to limit to non-fiction TV series. In addition, I renamed Audio eBooks to say Books - Audio eBooks.

Limiting by MP3 CD
Our district has started buying audio books in an MP3 CD format. Typically, CDs come in two varieties: audio and data. Audio CDs were specifically designed to play in a normal CD player. By constrast, data CDs were designed to be read by computers. MP3 CDs are techincally data CDs so while newer cd players likely can play them, older CD players will not. For example, the CD player that came with my 2003 Toyota cannot play MP3 CD audio books but the car stereo we bought several years later can.

There are a couple advantages of MP3 CDs that, depending on your circumstances, can outweight their disadvantages. First, an entire audio book is often on one MP3 CD. This means if your car can play MP3 files, you won't have to try switching CDs while going 75 mph down I-25. Second, MP3 files are easier to transfer from a CD to your portable music player, such as an iPod. If you do transfer library audio books to your iPod, you should delete them when your check-up period is over. However, unlike Overdrive audio books, your computer will not prompt you to delete them.

To see a list of all the MP3 CD audio books we own:

Click on the Advanced Search link in our catalog
Next to Title Keyword type an *
In the Format section scroll down and click on Books - MP3 CD
Click the Red Arrow to begin your search

Here are the results. This limit also works with the Audience Adult - Fiction and Adult - Non-Fiction limits.

Limiting by Non-Fiction TV Series
We've been able to search for TV Series for a while. However, we now have a non-fiction TV series collection code so we can limit specifically to non-fiction TV series also. This is how you do it:

Click on the Advanced Search link in our catalog
Next to Title Keyword type an *
In the Format section scroll down and click on Video Recording - TV Series
In the Audience section highlight Adult - Non-Fiction
Click the Red Arrow to begin your search

Here are the results.

Audio eBooks
As I mentioned above, I renamed Audio eBooks to say Books - Audio eBooks. I did this in order to have a consistent naming scheme for all our audio book labels. To find all audio ebooks that are currently in our catalog:

Click on the Advanced Search link in our catalog
Next to Title Keyword type an *
In the Format section scroll down and click on Books - Audio eBook
Click the Red Arrow to begin your search

Here are the results.

A couple of notes about Overdrive Audio eBooks. First, many of the Overdrive books do not have catalog records that we can download from other places easily. This means that each record has to be painstakenly created by our catalogers, which takes time. As a result, for now, if you are looking specifically for Overdrive books, it's best to go directly to our Overdrive Website. Second, there's only one collection code for Audio eBooks, regardless of whether they are fiction or non-fiction. So, the Adult - Fiction and Adult - Non-Fiction limits won't work.

Item vs. Bib Hold Requests

2011-05-22T11:57:00.004-06:00

As most of you know, one of the very nice features in our catalog is the ability to request items that are either checked out or at another location. However, there are two different ways to request a title. You can either do a "bib level" request or an "item level request." (See this post for a refresher on the difference between a bib and item record.)

Placing a Bib Level Request
Bib level requests are the most common type of requests. Let's assume that I was interested in requesting Brain Rules for Baby, by John Medina. There are two different ways that a bib level request can be placed. Let's say that I started searching for this book using a Title Keyword search for the term brain rules. As you can see, this returns a couple of results. Each result shows a Request Item button on the right side of the screen. Clicking this button will result in a bib level request. At this point, I could also choose to click on the correct title to go to the full bib display for this title. In this case, there is another Request Item button that shows in the bottom right corner of the screen that will also allow me to make a bib level request.

Placing an Item Level Request
There are cases in which an item level request is more appropriate. To place an item level request, first go to the full bib of the record you are interested in. Then scroll down to the Copy/Holding information section. This section shows each physical copy that is owned by the library district. Find the specific copy you are interested in requesting and then click the corresponding Request Copy link on the right side of the screen.

Disadvantages of Item Level Holds
There are trade-offs to using either the bib or the item level request. The biggest problem with an item level request is that you could be passed by in the queue if a book came available other than the specific copy you requested.

For instance, let's pretend that I was interested in a book that was currently checked out at all the locations that owned it. Because I tend to visit Carbon Valley the most, I chose to place an item level hold for it. However, Farr Library's copy was returned before Carbon Valley's copy. If I had placed a bib level request for this book, once the book was checked in at Farr, it would have told the system to place it in the courier to send down to me at Carbon Valley. However, because I told the system I only wanted Carbon Valley's copy, the Farr copy will skip me and go to the second person in the queue.

The other major danger of placing an item level hold is that even though the item looks like it's available at your chosen library, it could have been stolen or misplaced and that copy cannot be found. When the librarians run the list of holds to pull, they will search for this item. However, if they can't find it, they will put it in trace status and will look for it later in more detail. If they still can't find it, they will change it to a missing status. Because you placed an item level hold, you are stuck with requesting that specific item during this entire process even if you could have received a copy from another library faster.

Advantages of an Item Level Request
In general, I suggest performing a bib level request. However, there are cases where an item level request is more appropriate.

For newer TV Series, the entire season is checked out at one time. However, some of our older TV Series still have each disc attached to a different item record. Thus, you must do an item level request for disc 1 and then disc 2 and so on. You can see an example of this type of record if you look at Babylon 5: Season 1.
Magazines are a similar example to the one above. In order to request a specific issue, you must choose the specific copy request option. You can see an example of this with Martha Stewart Living.
Guidebooks are another example where each item may be different than the overall bib. In general, each item will be a different year that the guidebook was published. You can see Rick Steves' Best of Europe for an example of this type of record.
You see an item is currently checked in at the library you plan to visit. There is some risk here because as I noted above, the item may be stolen or misplaced. Also, if it's a very popular item, another borrow may pick up the item and check it out before our staff have a chance to pull it for you. The borrower holding an item in their hand always has priority over a borrower who requested the item but it hasn't been pulled for them yet.

Where does a Bib Level Request come from?
Currently, Horizon isn't doing any location prioritization at all. Requests appear on the pull list of whichever library owns the item and is the next to run their pull list. This means that if I did a bib level request for an item that was available at both Erie and Carbon Valley and chose a pickup location of Carbon Valley, I may get the Erie copy if Erie staff run their pull list first. I have heard a rumor that there is a way to force the item to appear on the pull list of the pickup location if there are multiple copies available. However, this is something that I will have to explore further before we can try implementing it.

Browse Books via Lexile Measures

2011-05-17T10:23:00.004-06:00

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

2011-05-09T07:51:00.008-06:00

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:

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.

Databases and Paperback Books

2011-04-10T12:51:00.006-06:00

I'm hoping to start writing regular posts again soon. Until then, two quick notes:

First, our cataloging department has started to catalog some of our databases. You can see examples here.

Second, the cataloging department is also putting a "paperbacks" designation in the MARC record. This means that you can now use our Subject Keyword catalog search to find many of our paperbacks. In addition, when viewing multiple editions, it's easier to see which edition of a book is the paperback version. For an example, do a Title Keyword search for Water for Elephants.

My Search for DVDs

2010-11-16T15:15:00.006-07:00

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.

New Catalog is Up!

2010-11-12T10:30:00.012-07:00

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.

Little Book Icons

2010-09-28T10:31:00.003-06:00

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:

Carbon Valley Regional Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=cvr
Centennial Park Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=cp
Erie Community Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=erib
Farr Regional Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=weld (this is the default you get when accessing the catalog from home)
Lincoln Park Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=lp
Eaton Public Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=eat
Fort Lupton Public & School Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=ftl
Glenn A. Jones, M.D. Memorial Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=joh
Hudson Public Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=hud
Northern Plains Public Library - http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=aul

See Item Order in the Catalog for more information on ways a library's profile matters.

Series Trial

2010-09-15T11:29:00.003-06:00

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:

Redemption by Karen Kingsbury - (Novelist)
Third Degree by James Patterson - (NoveList and Syndetics)
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan - (Novelist)
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - (NoveList and Syndetics)

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.

Catalog Unavailable Labor Day

2010-09-02T11:59:00.003-06:00

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)

2010-09-02T09:09:00.003-06:00

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.

New Blu-ray Search

2010-08-23T09:20:00.005-06:00

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:

Go to the Advanced search in our catalog.
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.
Under the New limit box click New Blu-ray.
If desired, choose a sorting option.
Click the Red Arrow to start your search.

"Did you mean" in New Catalog

2010-08-17T11:03:00.005-06:00

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

2010-08-12T10:22:00.006-06:00

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.

New Language Limits

2010-08-01T11:28:00.003-06:00

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.

Go to our catalog, http://catalog.mylibrary.us/
Click on the Advanced search page
Type an * next to Title Keyword
Under Format, choose Music
Under Language choose Spanish
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.