Hi all! Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking over from Pete as the Libraries' representative on the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC). I attended my first meeting on 11/16 and here's a little overview of topics covered.
Tracy Adkins and Lauri Goodling are the current co-chairs and ran the meeting.
The committee charter was discussed, along with a few tweaks that needed to be made. The committee wasn't able to meet some of its goals due to issues related to the recent upheaval at the college. Tracy would like to ask the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) to review and revise the committee's responsibilities in light of all this.
It was noted that the chair of the committee is a two year term and the committee is entering its third year, so Tracy and Lauri asked for volunteers to take over as chair. There were no volunteers and Tracy and Lauri graciously agreed to continue co-chairing the committee.
Tracy discussed the OIT-sponsored viewing of the recent EDUCAUSE online conference, which was not as well-attended as they would have liked. She said that OIT may re-evaluate this usage of funds and select other online workshops that might be of wider appeal.
ATAC will need to provide a representative to the Student Tech Fee Committee in January. The goal of having a representative from ATAC on this committee is to help tie the tech fee process to strategic and academic goals, and to keep ATAC apprised of the direction of the Tech Fee Committee.
The committee may not be able to get to the Annual Faculty Use Survey this year because surveys have to go through the approval process of the Office of Institutional Reporting. The new CIO may address this as well.
The committee plans to evaluate the current college-supported clicker system, Turning Technologies. Costs keep going up for students. iClicker seems to be the favored system now, but the committee is shooting for finishing its evaluation very early in 2013. They would like to have a library representative on this evaluation committee, if anyone is interested. I'll send a separate email about it so no one misses the opportunity.
Tracy gave a Desire2Learn (D2L) update. OIT feels good about the progress and everything is on schedule. Training will begin to be offered in late November or early December. Faculty access to D2L will begin in early December.
Tracy also gave an overview of the progress on the Tech Fee awards that were granted for FY13. Let me know if you'd like more details on individual awards. It's mostly upgrades to PCs, MediaSpot upgrades and new openings, etc. The sad takeaway here is that some of the awards had to be rescinded after the RIF because OIT just didn't have enough people to implement or support them. That money will go back into the Tech Fee reserves for use in FY14.
Tracy discussed the Instructional Technology Enhancement Awards grants, which she is funding out of her own budget because she feels it's an important activity. The deadline for this has past, but I know that we had at least one application from the Libraries. Sonya Slutskaya, Mary Ann Cullen, and Pat Leamon applied for funding for quizmaking software for their information literacy tutorial. Go Sonya, Mary Ann, & Pat!
The December ATAC meeting will be held over email and our next face-to-face meeting will be held on January 18, 2013.
Please let me know if you have any questions or issues you'd like me to put in front of the committee!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Fun Facts About Location Facets in GIL-Find
I've gotten a couple of questions about whether or not we can alphabetize the location facets in GIL-Find and why they're sorted the way they're sorted. So, here's the GIL-Find Location Facet 411.
When you do a search in GIL-Find, the location facets that you see on the left are in descending order by number of holdings. This is the way that most catalog/discovery layers work, and I doubt that the server site will want to change it. Even if they did want to change it, it wouldn't be good for us, and here's why.
The first level of location faceting only shows you five locations, then you have to click "more" to see others. If we used alpha order, that prime real estate would almost always be taken up by Alpharetta and Clarkston. Great for them, bad for the rest of you.
After you click more, you're not actually seeing ALL the locations. You're only seeing a truncated list. Eyeballing it, I'd guess 25-30. We have a squillion locations. Okay, not quite a squillion, but 157. In a more general search, there are actually locations that may have a few holdings for the search terms, but you're not seeing them because that list is truncated and the other locations with the most holdings are getting priority. Switch that to alpha order and you have a scenario where a location that only has one holding is bumping a location that might have 100+ holdings and be a better limiter for patrons. That, or Newton holdings would get bumped a lot. Again, not a good outcome for everyone.
So, you say, "Well, that makes sense, Tessa, but, durn it, I still want to limit searches to my campus' holdings!" Fear not! You can do that. You just have to do it in the Advanced Search.
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Search/Advanced
Near the bottom of the limits of that search, you will see a Location limit. Select your location and perform your search. You will see other location facets available to you in the search results, but the search results should still be only holdings in your selected location.
Now, I notice that you can only select a single location in the Advanced Search. I'm about to email our GIL-Find Guy now to suggest an enhancement for selecting multiple locations.
Give me a holler if you have any questions about this!
When you do a search in GIL-Find, the location facets that you see on the left are in descending order by number of holdings. This is the way that most catalog/discovery layers work, and I doubt that the server site will want to change it. Even if they did want to change it, it wouldn't be good for us, and here's why.
The first level of location faceting only shows you five locations, then you have to click "more" to see others. If we used alpha order, that prime real estate would almost always be taken up by Alpharetta and Clarkston. Great for them, bad for the rest of you.
After you click more, you're not actually seeing ALL the locations. You're only seeing a truncated list. Eyeballing it, I'd guess 25-30. We have a squillion locations. Okay, not quite a squillion, but 157. In a more general search, there are actually locations that may have a few holdings for the search terms, but you're not seeing them because that list is truncated and the other locations with the most holdings are getting priority. Switch that to alpha order and you have a scenario where a location that only has one holding is bumping a location that might have 100+ holdings and be a better limiter for patrons. That, or Newton holdings would get bumped a lot. Again, not a good outcome for everyone.
So, you say, "Well, that makes sense, Tessa, but, durn it, I still want to limit searches to my campus' holdings!" Fear not! You can do that. You just have to do it in the Advanced Search.
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Search/Advanced
Near the bottom of the limits of that search, you will see a Location limit. Select your location and perform your search. You will see other location facets available to you in the search results, but the search results should still be only holdings in your selected location.
Now, I notice that you can only select a single location in the Advanced Search. I'm about to email our GIL-Find Guy now to suggest an enhancement for selecting multiple locations.
Give me a holler if you have any questions about this!
Friday, April 20, 2012
Item Statuses in GIL Catalogs
There are a lot of item statuses that you will see in GIL Classic and GIL-Find, but here are the most common you'll encounter and what they mean to you. (The statuses that an item goes through from ordering to reaching the shelf are listed chronologically.)
On Order
Items that are on order look a little different in GIL Classic versus GIL-Find. They will both have an “on order” location, such as “Alpharetta On Order” or “Decatur On Order”. In GIL Classic, an additional “On Order” line that reads something like “1 Copy Ordered as of 03-21-12”. Sadly, we cannot currently display this information in GIL-Find, so it will just have the on order location and a line that reads “status information not available”. Items in this state have been ordered, but have not yet arrived in Technical Services. When they do arrive they will enter a “Received” state.
Received
In GIL Classic, items that have been received, but not yet cataloged, will still display the on order location (e.g., Decatur On Order) and will have an additional “On Order” line that reads something like “1 Copy Received as of 04-17-12”. Like items on order, GIL-Find cannot display this information and will just give the on order location and a line reading “status information not available”.
If you see something in a received state, we’ve got it in hand, but it still needs to be cataloged and processed.
In Process
Items with the In Process status have been received and cataloged, but may not have reached their campus yet. This status is applied when the item record is created by a cataloger, so there are a few more steps that the item still has to go through before being sent out. If the In Process status remains on an item for more than a few months, there is likely a problem. Please check for these items on the shelf and discharge them if you find them (to remove the In Process status). If the items cannot be found on the campus, contact a catalog librarian to run a check in Technical Services.
Not Checked Out
Items with this status have been cataloged, processed, received by their home campus and they should be available on the shelf.
Checked Out
Someone has charged this item. It should not be on the shelf.
In Transit
These items are on the move! They’re being sent to another campus/institution to be picked up by a patron who requested them or they’re being routed back to their home campus/institution after being returned by a patron.
Returned to Circulation
These items have made it back to their home campus and have been discharged by someone in the Circulation Department. They’re about to be, or have recently just been, shelved, so they might not be on the shelf yet if the discharge date is very recent. This status clears itself automatically after a few days.
Missing
This status is applied manually by librarians or staff. The item did not appear to be charged to a patron in Voyager, but it couldn’t be found on the shelf or in the library.
Lost
In the backend of Voyager, there are actually two lost statuses, “Lost--Library Applied” and “Lost--System Applied”. The former is applied by librarians or staff when we know that someone has an item, but it was not charged to their account for whatever reason. The latter is, as it states, applied by the system after an item has been overdue for an extended period.
Items go into Lost at different rates of time, depending upon item type. See the circulation matrices for more details.
Withdrawn
Withdrawn doesn’t actually display in the item status line in GIL Classic, so withdrawn items are also put in the temporary location of WITHDRAWN. This item status does display as “Withdrawn” in GIL-Find though.
Scheduled
In GIL Classic, this status displays as “Scheduled (Requests: 0)” and just plain ol’ “Scheduled” in GIL-Find. It means that this is an item from the nonprint faculty collection and has a booking request on it in the Media Scheduling module.
On Order
Items that are on order look a little different in GIL Classic versus GIL-Find. They will both have an “on order” location, such as “Alpharetta On Order” or “Decatur On Order”. In GIL Classic, an additional “On Order” line that reads something like “1 Copy Ordered as of 03-21-12”. Sadly, we cannot currently display this information in GIL-Find, so it will just have the on order location and a line that reads “status information not available”. Items in this state have been ordered, but have not yet arrived in Technical Services. When they do arrive they will enter a “Received” state.
Received
In GIL Classic, items that have been received, but not yet cataloged, will still display the on order location (e.g., Decatur On Order) and will have an additional “On Order” line that reads something like “1 Copy Received as of 04-17-12”. Like items on order, GIL-Find cannot display this information and will just give the on order location and a line reading “status information not available”.
If you see something in a received state, we’ve got it in hand, but it still needs to be cataloged and processed.
In Process
Items with the In Process status have been received and cataloged, but may not have reached their campus yet. This status is applied when the item record is created by a cataloger, so there are a few more steps that the item still has to go through before being sent out. If the In Process status remains on an item for more than a few months, there is likely a problem. Please check for these items on the shelf and discharge them if you find them (to remove the In Process status). If the items cannot be found on the campus, contact a catalog librarian to run a check in Technical Services.
Not Checked Out
Items with this status have been cataloged, processed, received by their home campus and they should be available on the shelf.
Checked Out
Someone has charged this item. It should not be on the shelf.
In Transit
These items are on the move! They’re being sent to another campus/institution to be picked up by a patron who requested them or they’re being routed back to their home campus/institution after being returned by a patron.
Returned to Circulation
These items have made it back to their home campus and have been discharged by someone in the Circulation Department. They’re about to be, or have recently just been, shelved, so they might not be on the shelf yet if the discharge date is very recent. This status clears itself automatically after a few days.
Missing
This status is applied manually by librarians or staff. The item did not appear to be charged to a patron in Voyager, but it couldn’t be found on the shelf or in the library.
Lost
In the backend of Voyager, there are actually two lost statuses, “Lost--Library Applied” and “Lost--System Applied”. The former is applied by librarians or staff when we know that someone has an item, but it was not charged to their account for whatever reason. The latter is, as it states, applied by the system after an item has been overdue for an extended period.
Items go into Lost at different rates of time, depending upon item type. See the circulation matrices for more details.
Withdrawn
Withdrawn doesn’t actually display in the item status line in GIL Classic, so withdrawn items are also put in the temporary location of WITHDRAWN. This item status does display as “Withdrawn” in GIL-Find though.
Scheduled
In GIL Classic, this status displays as “Scheduled (Requests: 0)” and just plain ol’ “Scheduled” in GIL-Find. It means that this is an item from the nonprint faculty collection and has a booking request on it in the Media Scheduling module.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Recommended Reading & Links From Apple Executive Briefing
In February, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend an "executive briefing" at the Apple HQ in Cupertino, California. I'll be presenting on it at the Reference Committee meeting tomorrow, but I wanted to post my list of readings and links from briefing, in no particular order.
iBooks Author (digital book creation app)
http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author
Abelard to Apple : The Fate of American Colleges and Universities
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Record/366378
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Record/305584
(We also have a copy of this at Newton & in eBooks on EBSCO)
7 Things You Should Know About Challenge-Based Learning
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutChall/244525
Apple Distinguished Educators Program
http://www.apple.com/education/apple-distinguished-educator
Created to recognize K-12 and higher education pioneers who are using a variety of Apple products to transform teaching and learning. ADEs work closely with Apple, participating in and often presenting at education events.
ACOT2: Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow - Today
http://ali.apple.com/acot2
This is the evolution of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project which started in 1985 to study how routine technology use influences teaching and learning. In 1995, it was replaced with the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow-Today (ACOT2) program, with the stated goal “to help high schools get closer to creating the kind of learning environment this generation of students needs [sic], wants [sic], and expects [sic] so they will stay in school.”
GPC’s iTunes University Site (in development)
https://eapps.gpc.edu/itunesu
iBooks Author (digital book creation app)
http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author
Abelard to Apple : The Fate of American Colleges and Universities
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Record/366378
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
http://gilfind.gpc.edu/vufind/Record/305584
(We also have a copy of this at Newton & in eBooks on EBSCO)
7 Things You Should Know About Challenge-Based Learning
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutChall/244525
Apple Distinguished Educators Program
http://www.apple.com/education/apple-distinguished-educator
Created to recognize K-12 and higher education pioneers who are using a variety of Apple products to transform teaching and learning. ADEs work closely with Apple, participating in and often presenting at education events.
ACOT2: Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow - Today
http://ali.apple.com/acot2
This is the evolution of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project which started in 1985 to study how routine technology use influences teaching and learning. In 1995, it was replaced with the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow-Today (ACOT2) program, with the stated goal “to help high schools get closer to creating the kind of learning environment this generation of students needs [sic], wants [sic], and expects [sic] so they will stay in school.”
GPC’s iTunes University Site (in development)
https://eapps.gpc.edu/itunesu
Monday, March 12, 2012
Enabling Desktop Notifications in LibraryH3lp
LibraryH3lp's recent upgrade added a couple of snazzy features to the webchat client, one of which is Desktop Notifications.
This feature is native in the Google Chrome browser, so all you have to do to us it in Chrome is log into webchat, open the Actions menu in the top right of the screen, and click "Enable Desktop Notifications".
Desktop Notifications will also work in Firefox, but you do have to install an add-on. (You should not have to be an admin to do this. We've tested it on a power user machine and it worked just fine.)
Go to this page and click the "Add to Firefox" button.
Just follow the prompts after that. You must to restart Firefox to enable the add-on.
After Firefox has restarted, log into LibraryH3lp webchat, open the Actions menu in the top right of the screen, and click "Enable Desktop Notifications".
At some point during the process, you will also be notified that libraryh3lp.com is asking for permission to show desktop notifications. Click "Allow".
At the moment, Desktop Notifications don't work at all in IE. So, remember, don't click on the blue E!
If you have enabled Desktop notifications correctly a little window with the blue LibraryH3lp question mark should pop up in the lower right hand corner of your monitor, if there is chat activity and the webchat client is minimized or not on top. Don't worry about the "Options" menu on those notifications. It's under-the-hood stuff, not cosmetic. Just leave it at the defaults.
Just email Tessa with any questions!
This feature is native in the Google Chrome browser, so all you have to do to us it in Chrome is log into webchat, open the Actions menu in the top right of the screen, and click "Enable Desktop Notifications".
Desktop Notifications will also work in Firefox, but you do have to install an add-on. (You should not have to be an admin to do this. We've tested it on a power user machine and it worked just fine.)
Go to this page and click the "Add to Firefox" button.
Just follow the prompts after that. You must to restart Firefox to enable the add-on.
After Firefox has restarted, log into LibraryH3lp webchat, open the Actions menu in the top right of the screen, and click "Enable Desktop Notifications".
At some point during the process, you will also be notified that libraryh3lp.com is asking for permission to show desktop notifications. Click "Allow".
At the moment, Desktop Notifications don't work at all in IE. So, remember, don't click on the blue E!
If you have enabled Desktop notifications correctly a little window with the blue LibraryH3lp question mark should pop up in the lower right hand corner of your monitor, if there is chat activity and the webchat client is minimized or not on top. Don't worry about the "Options" menu on those notifications. It's under-the-hood stuff, not cosmetic. Just leave it at the defaults.
Just email Tessa with any questions!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Copying & Pasting Searches in GIL
Copying and pasting a title to use for a search in GIL is a great little time saver, particularly when checking for duplicates on your order slips, but there is a caveat. When copying and pasting from a webpage, you can carry over formatting that will cause your search to bomb out even if we own the title.
For example, we have McGraw-Hill’s GMAT. If you copy and paste that title into a GIL Classic exact title search, as is, you'll get a "no matches found" message, even though we own it. When you copy the title, you're getting a formatted, as opposed to plain text, apostrophe. GIL Classic is very literal, especially in the exact search. This is why it's more precise than GIL Find, but also more demanding. If you remove the apostrophe and search on McGraw-Hills GMAT (or delete the apostrophe and retype, which will be plain text), you'll get two hits.
This premise applies to any sort of potentially formatted punctuation, accent marks, etc. If you remove anything like that from a copy and paste search, it won't bomb out unless we really don't own the title.
The above applies only to GIL Classic. GIL-Find seems to just ignore punctuation. However, I'm not 100% certain of that. If you have a copy and paste search bomb out, in any catalog or search interface, and you feel like it shouldn't have, removing any punctuation and accent marks is always a good first step.
For example, we have McGraw-Hill’s GMAT. If you copy and paste that title into a GIL Classic exact title search, as is, you'll get a "no matches found" message, even though we own it. When you copy the title, you're getting a formatted, as opposed to plain text, apostrophe. GIL Classic is very literal, especially in the exact search. This is why it's more precise than GIL Find, but also more demanding. If you remove the apostrophe and search on McGraw-Hills GMAT (or delete the apostrophe and retype, which will be plain text), you'll get two hits.
This premise applies to any sort of potentially formatted punctuation, accent marks, etc. If you remove anything like that from a copy and paste search, it won't bomb out unless we really don't own the title.
The above applies only to GIL Classic. GIL-Find seems to just ignore punctuation. However, I'm not 100% certain of that. If you have a copy and paste search bomb out, in any catalog or search interface, and you feel like it shouldn't have, removing any punctuation and accent marks is always a good first step.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Status of the Withdrawn Status
We’ve had some problems recently with patrons being sent to other campuses to get items that turned out to be withdrawn, so I wanted to take a second to go over that status and how it currently displays.
When items are withdrawn from the collection, they are given the item status of “Withdrawn”, which allows me to run a report and pull them out for Sonya, who removes/suppresses the records in the catalog and takes our holdings off of the WorldCat record, if necessary.
Now, unfortunately, this item status doesn’t display in GIL Classic. That’s why people withdrawing items have to add the temporary location of “WITHDRAWN,” in addition to the item status. This temporary location does display in GIL Classic. We’ve put it in all caps to make it as noticeable as possible, and it's pretty large, but that’s the best we can do given the limitations of the software.
Now, GIL-Find is a little more flexible about statuses than GIL Classic, and I’ve been working with the server site to get statuses to display in a more meaningful way. When the new code rolls out soon, we may even start seeing “Withdrawn” in GIL-Find. Here’s a screenshot from the testing code.
Whether they’re using GIL-Find or GIL Classic, please look for this temporary location and/or status in the holdings record before telling someone an item is available and remind your part-time staff to do so. Patrons have gotten understandably upset after driving to another campus for a book that wasn’t there.
Thanks everyone! Please let me know if you have any questions.
When items are withdrawn from the collection, they are given the item status of “Withdrawn”, which allows me to run a report and pull them out for Sonya, who removes/suppresses the records in the catalog and takes our holdings off of the WorldCat record, if necessary.
Now, unfortunately, this item status doesn’t display in GIL Classic. That’s why people withdrawing items have to add the temporary location of “WITHDRAWN,” in addition to the item status. This temporary location does display in GIL Classic. We’ve put it in all caps to make it as noticeable as possible, and it's pretty large, but that’s the best we can do given the limitations of the software.
Now, GIL-Find is a little more flexible about statuses than GIL Classic, and I’ve been working with the server site to get statuses to display in a more meaningful way. When the new code rolls out soon, we may even start seeing “Withdrawn” in GIL-Find. Here’s a screenshot from the testing code.
Whether they’re using GIL-Find or GIL Classic, please look for this temporary location and/or status in the holdings record before telling someone an item is available and remind your part-time staff to do so. Patrons have gotten understandably upset after driving to another campus for a book that wasn’t there.
Thanks everyone! Please let me know if you have any questions.
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