InfoSoup Development Blog

As many of you may have noticed already, Community Reviews was installed in InfoSoup by Innovative last Tuesday. The design and styling have been applied and patrons can currently add reviews. HOWEVER, we are currently unable to access the reviews to moderate them and add appropriate reviews that have been contributed. We are working with Innovative to get access to the management info, but are still waiting for help.

Because of this, we did not announce Community Reviews to you or to patrons via InfoSoup, as we don't want a lot of people trying to add reviews that we can't get to and have them getting frustrated that their reviews aren't showing up in the catalog. Once we have access to the management info, we will announce the new service on the InfoSoup homepage and will also provide a brief screencast for how to add reviews.

If you have any questions about this, please contact Beth. Thanks for your patience!

At the last AAC meeting, I shared one of my insomnia projects - an interactive map of InfoSoup library locations. I realized today that I never posted it here for others to see! So here it is. It's linked to on the Libraries page on InfoSoup. At the AAC meeting, someone asked if they could link to it from their library's web site, and the answer was yes! Feel free to link to and use however you like. And if you see anything that needs to be fixed or changed, just let me know.

Thanks,
Beth

At the InfoSoup Brainstorming meeting that was held last Fall, we decided we would try an InfoSoup blog that would feed into the 3 homepages I edit fairly regularly. The blog would contain highlights about new booklists or services, database tips, search tips, contests, etc. I'm getting ready to set up the blog so we can give it a try, but I'm stumbling on a name.

I came up with "Think Inside the Bowl" and "In the Stew." What do you think a good name would be? Submit your ideas in the comments by Friday, March 14th.

Thanks!
Beth

Evan and I have configured Community Reviews on the test & training server and would like you to take a look and tell us what you think. The "add a review" icon will actually say "write a review" once the updated icon arrives, and it only shows on the full record. If there are reviews available for a particular item, links to the reviews will appear under the "add a review" icon. Clicking on the title will make the review appear and clicking again on the title will make it go away. For a good example of a record with reviews attached, go to http://tstils.owls.lib.wi.us/record=b1593785.

You must log in to your patron account before you can write a review. In the patron account, you will see a new button added called "My Reviews." You can see your reviews and delete them from there.

All reviews are moderated and so must be approved before they are added to the catalog. There was no option available to allow reviews to be immediately posted without moderation. If patrons feel a review is inappropriate, there is a "Report Review" button at the bottom of every review that takes you to a form where you can contact the moderator. (I imagine OWLS staff will be responsible for moderating the reviews, but don't know who at this time.)

Feel free to add your own reviews and check out your patron account to see how it all works. I'll try to moderate new reviews over the next couple of weeks, but keep in mind that I leave at 3 p.m. each day. Post your questions and comments here on the blog, so we can track what needs fixing.

I'd like to hear back from you by Monday, March 31st. If everything looks good by then, we'll make plans for going live. Thanks for your input!

Beth

P.S. The test & training server is EXTREMELY SLOW, so please be patient while checking things out. It won't be this slow on the live server.

On our staging server http://www.infosoup.org:2082/ I have added a WebBridge link to All Music Guide for any music search. This is similar to the link we have for Internet Movie Database for movie searches or Amazon for book searches. It does not mean that there will be an actual record. The link will search All Music Guide for the author in the catalog record. In general the link will take you to an Index page as in this example http://www.infosoup.org:2082/record=b1527614. For comparison, I have All Music Guide open in a new window, unlike IMDB which opens in a frame. There are pros and cons to both. If you have a strong preference, let me know.

In staging I have also added links on movie searches to Move Review Query Engine and Rotten Tomatoes. I can only get the RT link to take one to an index page rather than directly to the main page for the search titled. Try any movie title search in staging and you should see the links. If you have thoughts on adding or not adding these or similar type of review sites, let us know.

Based on the conversation at the InfoSoup brainstorming session, we made a small change to the brief record display. When available in the catalog record, series information will now display in the brief record. To see how that looks, here is a sample search.

Still on our to do list is an I'm looking for... Series page. I had some contact with the Kent District Library and was hopeful that we could acquire access to their series data that they use in their What's Next database. I was just informed this morning that they will not sell us the data, but plan to develop a subscription service sometime in 2008. Before developing an InfoSoup series page we will need to way the benefits of doing something ourselves or waiting to see what there service is like and what it will cost.

Here are some libraries using III's latest OPAC product, "Encore":

• Scottsdale Public Library (do search in encore preview search box)


• Nashville Public Library


• Westerville Public Library (the search box near "A New Way to search the catalog")

What do you think?

Beth

Here's my attempt at summarizing the things that came up at the Brainstorming meeting on November 14th. If I miss something you thought was important, be sure to add it in the comments!

Here's who attended: Beth Carpenter, Evan Bend, Holly Ledvina, Gerri Moeller, and Rick Krumwiede from OWLS; Jamie Matzcak from NFLS; Penny Habeck from SHA; Cheryl White from STR; Barbara Wentzel from KIM-LIT; Michael Nitz, Sara Kopesky, Barbara Kelly, Colleen Rortvedt from APL; Elizabeth Timmins from SEY; LIsa Hein from MAR; Carolyn Habeck from HPL; Dominic Frandrup from WAU; and Maggie Waggoner from KAU.

Topics of discussion:

• Community reviews feature is being worked on and should be ready by the end of the year.


• Need for accessibility tips for seniors (how to enlarge print in your broswer) - could be included in the help files or posted as a tip on the homepage; other accessibility enhancements are sometimes available from III, we'll keep this on our list.


• Holiday headers in InfoSoup are fun and look good. I will post to get comments on what holidays/events we should create headings for (rather than only developing them when I can't sleep!). See Holiday iSoup Headers to add your ideas in the comments.


• Would like "If you like this book, then you'll like..." feature. Led to discussion of III's next OPAC called encore and some of the "most popular" features it includes. Gerri and I would like to get encore in 2009, but it is expensive and will depend on being able to afford it. I will post encore examples for you to explore in a later post. For now, we could collect "If you like" lists from OWLSnet libraries and post them in the booklists portion of InfoSoup.


• Lots of discussion about the current booklists and how to make them easy for all libraries to contribute to. (Evan, please add anything you'd like to share about that in the comments.)


• Tagging was mentioned as being a good thing (saw it in encore example and liked it). We could work with LibraryThing to try to implement their LibraryThing for Libraries in our current opac, then see what patrons think of it.


• Adding things to WebBridge like All Music Guide, BadgerCat, series or booklist links. Evan will explore some possibilities and will post to the blog for you to explore and comment on.


• Need for series access - We will test displaying series info on the brief record. We could also create a "Looking for" page for series, mirroring the ones that already exist for movies, audiobooks, etc. We'll play around with these and post to the blog for you to take a look.


• A suggestion was made to post the RSS icon for BookLetters on the homepage, so people know we're keeping up with current technologies. This will be done ASAP.


• Discussion of adding AskAway to additional pages in the catalog, such as the Research Tools page. We'll explore some options.


• The need for patrons to be able to reset their own PINs. Gerri mentioned that this is an enhancement coming soon, so stay tuned!


• We will be working on a movies page and a music page, as time permits, to match the kind of thing we did for the Readers' Page and local history pages.


• We discussed the design of the Research Tools page. Evan will be playing around with the suggestions made: adding a little more descriptive text, posting highlights and tips...


• We discussed starting an InfoSoup Blog which would be fed into the homepage (the 3 homepages, actually). It would replace the column on the left of the homepage and would include similar items as are in that column at present: new booklist highlights, contest news, database highlights, search tips, etc. This will not only make it easier for me to update the 3 homepages more seamlessly, but would allow us to test how/if patrons will use a blog. An added advantage is that the blog could easily be fed into any OWLSnet library web site for live content about InfoSoup. I will create the posts as I already do on the homepage and will moderate comments, making it obvious that I am responding as "InfoSoup" rather than a particular library. If comments are obviously from a particular library's patron and requires specific follow-up, I will contact that library to have them respond. This will be a test and can be shut down if needed.

Yikes! Was that it? Help me out if you were there and fill in any details I missed. Thanks so much to everyone who attended and to Barbara Wentzel for hosting us at Kimberly and taking care of lunch!

Beth

Thanks to everyone who came to the brainstorming meeting yesterday! We had a good crew assembled and the input you provided was invaluable.

One of the comments that came up was that the holiday headers that have been created were fun and added a little something special to the catalog. I tend to create the graphics when I can't sleep at night ;-) so their development has been sporadic to say the least. I said I would post on this topic to find out what holidays it would be good to create headers for, so they can be developed a little more systematically. So here goes!

I already have headers for the following holidays:

• Halloween


• Thanksgiving


• Christmas (Santa hat, not religious)


• New Years


• 4th of July (I think, but have to check)

At the meeting someone suggested adding Talk Like a Pirate Day for something fun. What would you like to see added to the list? It would be nice to have a diverse list, but also kind of need to be occasions that have an easily found graphic. Post your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks! Beth

We will be having an InfoSoup Brainstorming Party on Wednesday, November 14th, from noon to about 2:30 p.m. at the James J. Siebers Memorial Library in Kimberly. (APL's meeting room was closed in preparation for their book sale, so thanks much to Barbara Wentzel for making her space available to us!)

We'll be serving lunch (not sure what yet, but may include pizza, soup, salad, and dessert or some combination of them) and beverages, and we'll make sure there are vegetarian options, as well.

If you are planning on joining us (and I hope you will!), please RSVP to me by Wednesday, November 7th, so we can make final arrangements for food. If you have any questions, please give me a call!

Thanks,
Beth