InfoSoup Development Blog

We are going to be working on applying the latest upgrade to the catalog, WebPac Pro, in the next couple of months. Spellcheck is one of the features we will be adding with the upgrade. Patrons will be asked "did you mean..." if they enter a search that results in no hits. Yay! Pretty cool.

We have also looked into the Community Reviews feature, which would allow patrons to add reviews to materials in the catalog. All reviews would be moderated, so nothing would be posted automatically, and people have to log into their account to write a review. OWLS staff is very interested in adding this feature when we upgrade to WebPac Pro. It has been included in the development budget, but we are wondering what your thoughts are. Would you like patrons to be able to add reviews to materials in InfoSoup? Should we include Community Reviews in the WebPac Pro upgrade?

One of the things we can do in WebpacPro is to set all verifications to log users into My Account. For example, if a patron is placing a hold but hasn't logged into their account, they will be prompted to log in, can place their hold, but then they stay in a logged in state. Right now, they can place a hold, but they don't actually log in to their account to do so.

There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this. The main advantage is that the auto login makes it easy to continue to place holds or view My Account or enter databases without forcing them to log in again. The main disadvantage is that people using a public workstation who aren't used to being logged in automatically might walk away from the workstation without logging out of their account because they haven't had to in the past. The workstation will eventually timeout, as they do now. WebpacPro on the testing server is currently set up to do the auto login if you want to try it out and see what you think.

What do you think about this? Is the auto login benefit more important or a greater advantage than patrons in the libraries possibly walking away without logging out of their account? Can we train patrons in the libraries to log out after using public workstations? Or do we need to protect their privacy and keep things as they are now? Please weigh in with your opinions in the comments below. Thanks!

We have activated "Related Subjects" on the InfoSoup test server. Related Subjects will appear in the search box when you have performed a keyword search. Here is an example of how it looks:

When you click on the "more" link, a pop-up window displays additional subject searches related to the current search. You can click on them to initiate a new search based on that subject. We can't control how it functions, meaning, we can't dictate if it goes into a pop-up window or not. But even though we aren't very fond of how it appears, we are liking the idea and what it can offer patrons and staff.

What do you think? Any problems with enabling this feature? Love it? Hate it? Post your comments, please.

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.

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!

Unfortunately, the problem we have with not being able to access the community reviews management info (where submitted reviews get approved for posting) is a bigger problem than we thought. Innovative is working on it, but is having trouble figuring out what's going on.

So! We had to temporarily disable the community reviews feature in InfoSoup, as we don't know when this issue will be resolved. Our apologies for this inconvenience to you and your patrons!

Please contact Beth if you have any questions.

InfoSoup has a rating feature that we've had turned off, but I took some time today to explore how it would work if we wanted to give it a try. It's really easy to use and to implement in the catalog, so I enabled it in Staging so you could take a look and see what you think.

Go to Staging, do a search for anything and go to the full record. On the full record page, you'll see a "rating" link with stars next to it on the left below "description" and about the location and/or holds information. Clicking on the rating link will take you to a help page that describes how to use the rating feature. Clicking on the stars will provide your rating of the item (if you're already logged into your patron account) or will prompt you to log in so you can rate the item. Give it a try and see what you think.

I think it would be nice to provide this feature along with Community Reviews, as it provides another way for people to interact with the catalog. Some people might prefer to rate items vs. add a review and vice versa. What do you think? Post your thoughts in the comments by Wednesday, June 25th.

Thanks!
Beth

It looks like we can successfully access submitted community reviews at long last. Woohoo!

I have Community Reviews enabled in Staging, so you can take a look at it and remind yourself how it works. (Let me know if you have any questions.) If all looks well, I'd like to take a few days to create screencasts on how to use it and the ratings feature (if we decide to enable that, too).

If all looks well with "What's Simmering" then I could announce both new services in the blog, including screencasts on how to use them, and enable the blog feed on the live InfoSoup homepages late next week. It would be a nice way to get the blog off to a good start, as well as the new interactive features.

Sound good? Let me know what you think!

Thanks, Beth

In a previous post, Just try to stay logged in!, I reported that there was a bug in the last upgrade that would cause the user to be logged out when they clicked on the Start Over button after they were logged in. I'm happy to report that this has now been fixed and should no longer be a problem.

This was one of the major problems with the My Lists implementation. While My Lists is still not very intuitive, it's much more usable now that you're not logged out every time you try to save something to a list. Please take a look at My Lists in staging again and let me know what you think. If it's better now, we could release it with an instructional screencast.

I look forward to hearing what you think! Thanks,
Beth

We discussed the PIN retrieval feature I mentioned in this post at the AAC meeting today. Innovative has not responded to the call we put out at the beginning of September. The consensus at AAC was that this feature is important to us and our patrons, so we should implement it regardless of the problems that exist with it (mainly with display problems). I will add some requested text to the form and will remove duplicated buttons and text (a temporary fix I came up with) as discussed.

For those of you who weren't at AAC today, please take a look at it again in staging on the My Account page and let me know what you think. If you don't see any problems with using it as is, I'll make it live in the next few weeks.

Thanks,
Beth

There is a new option for search limiting that may be helpful to patrons using the Reading History feature in their patron accounts. Once you perform a search (when you're logged into your account) you'll see a new limit box in the search widget at the top of the page that says "Limit to titles which aren't in my Reading History." When you check that box and re-execute your search, it removes titles that appear in your Reading History from the search results. This could be handy if you have a favorite author, for example, and you'd like to only see those titles you haven't already read in your search results.

The consensus at AAC was that this is a nice feature and we should add it to InfoSoup. For those of you who weren't at the meeting, what do you think? Please look at it in staging and post your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks,
Beth

The "Forgot Your PIN?" feature has officially been added to InfoSoup. Patrons can now reset their own PINs if they have an email address associated with their patron account. View the screencast for a quick demo of how it all works or try it for yourself on the My Account page in InfoSoup.

Feel free to post your comments or questions about this feature here.

Thanks,
Beth

A new feature has been added to InfoSoup, and its name is "My Lists." This feature allows you to save materials to lists that you name and describe, and then allows you to manipulate your lists via sorting, deleting titles, or creating new lists. View the screencast for a quick demo of how it works and give it a try today.



Feel free to post your comments or questions about My Lists here.

Thanks! Beth

We are going to be switching to a new vendor for book jackets and summaries. The switch should take place this afternoon. Once the change is in place here are the differences you will see.

1. The covers will be a little larger.
2. When you click on the cover (either from the brief record or the full record) a summary page will open in a frame below. On the summary page you might see anything from a brief summary, publishers comments, book club guide, or a lengthy review from BookPage. Just click on "Back to Catalog" to return to the previous screen.
3. On the full record page, the Reviews & Summaries link will be replaced by and Additional Info link. This link will be the same as clicking on the cover.
4. We will no longer have Publishers Weekly or Library Journal reviews through Syndetics. These can usually be found on the Amazon page or by searching EBSCO from the links on the full record page. While we lose some convenience with this, our statistics show that the syndetics reviews were getting limited use.

You can see the new book covers on our development server at http://www.infosoup.org:2082

Here are a couple of examples

http://www.infosoup.org:2082/record=b1703003~S77 (With Review)
http://www.infosoup.org:2082/record=b1446333~S77 (Generic)

We apologize for the short notice. We have been looking at this switch for a while, but we were uncertain until very recently that the new vendor (BookLetters) would have their product ready in time. Our contract with Syndetics has run out so we needed to move quickly.

Why the switch? Two main reasons. One is that we believe BookLetters will provide a faster service. We have had numerous slowdown issues with syndetics over the years. This is something we will keep an eye on with the new service. The second is that we will be saving money which we hope to put toward other catalog enhancements. Please let me know if you have any questions or notice any problems.

Thanks,

Evan

In the live version of InfoSoup, on the full record pages, there is a link at the bottom of the page called "Permanent link to this record." See http://www.infosoup.org/record=b1638718~S77 for an example.

When you click on the link, the URL in the address bar of the browser changes and becomes a stable URL that can be copied and used to link back to that record from an email, web site, blog, etc. It's a great way to get URLs when creating web bibliographies or blog posts that you want to link to specific records in the catalog.

I'm proposing moving this link up on the page - I use it quite often and am frustrated by scrolling down, and I suspect other people might use it more if they knew what it was for. I have set up an example of what I propose in Staging and suggest posting it under the rating stars with a heading called "Share" and the link text being changed to "Link to this page." I also added a title for the link that shows when your cursor is over it, which says "Right click this link to copy a permanent URL for this page." See http://www.infosoup.org:2082/record=b1637558~S77 for an example. The positioning of the link isn't taking up screen real estate that was being used before, it was just white space.

What do you think? Please add your thoughts in the comments, and we'll go from there.

Thanks!
Beth

As was announced at the last AAC meeting, we will be adding LibraryThing to InfoSoup as a new enhancement. LibraryThing will only show on full record pages and will offer patrons a list of similar titles, a tag cloud, and links to other editions.

Evan and I have been tinkering with getting LibraryThing set up in the Staging version of InfoSoup and think we have a pretty good working example for you to take a look at. The data we're working with right now is from 2007, but as soon as Charles can get us a new set of data that will be updated to include all of our current titles. Try some searches of your own (not for new stuff at the moment) or try the following links. Scroll down towards the bottom of the page to find the LibraryThing info.

• Eldest by Christopher Paolini
• Population, 485 by Michael Perry
  
• Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
  

LibraryThing has been alive and well in InfoSoup for about a week now. Hopefully, you noticed and have been enjoying it. If not, give it a try!

I have loaded a new screencast on the InfoSoup blip.tv channel showing how to use LibraryThing in InfoSoup. Please take a look and share it with your patrons.

Thanks,
Beth