Course Web Guides - Kornelia Tancheva and Angela Horne

Opac Voyager changes – Jesse Koennecke and David Banush

Outreach to Off-Campus - Petrina Jackson, Marty Schlabach, Camille Andrews and Mary Ochs on their outreach efforts to folks outside the walls of academia--locally, nationally and internationally. 

Attending: Jim Morris-Knower (co-chair), Xian Wu, Linda Miller, Jim Alberts, Susanne Whitaker, Pat Miller, Susan Kendrick, Bronwen Bledsoe, Susette Newberry, Jill Powell (recorder, co-chair), Camille Andrews, Baseema Banco, Matt Connolly, Jesse Koennecke, Petrina Jackson, David Banush, Suzanne Cohen, Mihoko Hosoi, Mary Ochs, Michael Engle, Deb Schmidle, Fred Muratori, Lynn Thitchener, Nancy Skipper, Marty Schlabach, Staci Rogers, Pat Viele, Eileen Heeran, Maureen Morris, Virginia Cole, Angela Horne, Kornelia Tancheva

Course/Web Guides, Kornelia Tancheva and Angela Horne

Their slide presentation is on the Resources Tab of the Ref & Outreach website.
Originally funded by an CUL Internal Grant the course/web guides project strives to make it easier to create subject and course guides for instruction staff. The original committee consisted of Paul McMillin, PI, Lance Heidig, Angela Horne, and Kornelia Tancheva.  The group developed a system that is ¾ completed and uses the LibData open source software developed by Univ. of Minnesota.  Matt Connolly is the new technical lead person for the grant project. Since their work began, ILR has developed a similar system using CommonsSpot software.

Questions for the library system - do we still need an automatic system for the creation of web guides? Should we go with ILR system or continue developing the LibData system?

Angela demonstrated the LibData system at UofMinnesota. Resources are entered into a database. The handouts are generated from the items in the database. Entries can have multiple annotations by various instructional staff for different uses. Are people still creating subject guides?  Many in the audience said yes. People could publish them into Blackboard courses.

Susanne demonstrated what ILR is using for subject guides using CommonSpot. Also for their Best of the Web guides. ILR has 1200 resources in their database. Some databases have different descriptions, depending on where they are used. Have "link to cul holdings" box if they want an online link to holdings. In print view, URLs are generated and the left hand navigational bar is dismissed. David Demello is developer behind this system. Drop-down menu presents items that have been added and gives choices from which to choose.

Kornelia asked for those interested to work on this and several people volunteered: Camille Andrews, Jim Alberts, and Lynn Thitchener. A brown bag was suggested as a way to give more details about both systems.  Angela and Kornelia will arrange the brown bag and make a broader volunteer solicitation.

Voyager Upgrade public interface – A new version (6.1) is coming right after finals. Jesse Koennecke and David Banush demonstrated some new features.
They demonstrated an upcoming version that displays serials that predicts when the next issue comes. Wording is "not yet received - expected on 10-17-06" Example was Journal of American Culture. People expressed doubts that this could be successful -  the dates could be wrong, it would raise expectations of what patrons could get, they might all arrive on that date and staff to produce the issues. Information is in the serials check-in record, so staff can look the same information up there. Many of these dates are there to generate claims. One suggestion: having the date the last issue was received might be more useful than a projected future date.

Add to Refworks - this link appears on a record. If you click on it, it imports the record into ReWorks. If you check multiple boxes from a results screen you can send multiple records to RefWorks. The link is at the bottom. Rick Silterra is doing the programming. Placement of links was also discussed. There was talk that headers take up too much space.

Headings keyword searches - this is particularly useful to search for LC subject headings, where one doesn't always know the proper order of the heading. A keyword search gives useful results back.

Test system is at  https://catalog-unicode.library.cornell.edu. Send feedback to Jesse.

Suggestion that the default view be the long view instead of the short view. This was decided when we had Notis. Suggestion that REDS look into this. Patrons retrieve records after a search in brief view, and they don't know why they are retrieving them since they can’t see the relevant keywords (kewords found are displayed in long view only).

An email from Jesse with more details on the changes (sent on Nov 6, 2006) is reproduced below:

Public Services and ReDS Colleagues,

The Voyager Upgrade team is hard at work testing current functionality and investigating new functionality for a new version of Voyager.  We wanted to give you an opportunity to check out and comment on some new features that are available to our users in this version.  If you are interested, go to the test OPAC: https://catalog-unicode.library.cornell.edu. Be aware, the test system is not a robust as the production system, so response time may be slower for some of these features.  Please send any feedback you have to me at jtk1@cornell.edu by Friday November 17th to give us time to decide how to implement these features.

Headings Keyword Searches on the Basic Search screen: This version of Voyager allows us to do keyword searches in several of headings indexes.  Previously, these were only left justified searches in the relevant index, but now users do not need to be as precise in how they enter their search terms.   On the Basic Search screen, this feature is in effect for the Author/Name, Subject Heading, Author--Sorted by Title.

To see a particularly good example of how this works, try a subject heading search for Beethoven Symphonies in the current catalog, then try it in the test system.

New Search types on the Guided Keyword Search screen: MFHD 852 Public and MFHD Keyword Anywhere, the function is much better than the name (If you have any suggestions of what to call these searches, please let us know).  These searches allow the user to search for information stored in holdings records, and could be valuable for non-LC call numbers, particular locations, or other things in conjunction with other search terms. 

MFHD 852 Public will search the fields typically viewable by the public.  Try it for video or maps (or some other sometimes difficult to locate 'call number').

MFHD Keyword Anywhere will search anywhere in the holdings records, even location codes and other fields that do not appear to the public.  Try a MFHD Keyword Anywhere search for mann,ref AS A PHRASE or any other location code you may happen to know.


A couple of home grown solutions:

Through the hard work of Rick Silterra, we have two additional features to try out:

RefWorks it!: This appears on both the Search results screen or view record screen.  It will send any selected records to RefWorks.  Right now, the image for the button is not working in Internet Explorer, but it is fully operational.

Shortcut link for this item:  This is a stable URL for users to copy if they want to point to a specific Voyager record from a Web page, reading list, subject guide, etc...  You will see it on any individual record in the catalog.  If we want to keep this feature, where should it go?

That's all for now.  Thank you,

Jesse

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Outreach Speakers

Petrina Jackson, Archivist Rare and Manuscript Collections - Cornell Black Alumni Association (off-campus entity since they've already graduated) RMC receives lots of questions on early black alumni. They are very interesting questions, such as black student asking if they would be admitted. AD White replied that if they passed test, yes, and he would defend them even if white students protested. The protestors from the Straight takeover said their response might have been different had they known about that letter, but this was not widely known. Petrina states that educating the community on black history at Cornell can have a big impact.

Alpha Phi Alpha – first black fraternity in US, founded at Cornell in 1906. 1000 members came to campus to visit RMC and see centennial exhibition. Decide to mount an online presence, which is at http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/alpha/index.html. When visiting black colleges Petrina notices that many are not preserving their records. She stresses that this is very important.

Geneva Experiment Station Library, Marty Schlabach. Research done in fruit and vegetables, heaviest concentration is grapes and wine. They have 4 academic departments, USDA facilities, and the NYS Integrated Pest Management Program. Graduate students, but no undergrads.  Outreach to people, many of whom have no affiliation with Cornell, and who want to develop or test food products. The library-sponsored workshops are open and posted on the Library website. They have fostered partnerships and outreach with nearby colleges, such as Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Finger Lakes Community College. They now have a student intern/employee from Hobart and William Smith. Geneva faculty have close relationships with food processors and growers. Start-up business owners come in, esp. wineries. Recently established Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park http://www.thetechnologyfarm.com/ is on campus to encourage creating and growth of new businesses that utilize CU expertise.  Eastern Wine and Grape Archive http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/winegrape.html was established at RMC to document the history of the wine and grape industries in the Eastern US. .

Mann’s services to the international community - http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu/services/intl_community.cfm

TEEAL, AGORA, University of KwaZulu-Natal project, Camille Andrews and Mary Ochs

ACCI is a plant breeding Ph.D. program at the University of KwaZulu-Natal that is joint with Cornell. Camille traveled there to deliver workshops; Mary has traveled to Africa as well. Purpose of ACCI is to have less of a brain drain from the country.. Mann supports them with document delivery, reference, SDI alerts, interlibrary loan. Produces handouts, poster, and pens to publicize it. From Mann’s website:

AGORA provides free web access to hundreds of major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to research institutions in the developing world. AGORA is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization in partnership with major scientific publishers, Mann Library and others. It derives from the digital agricultural library TEEAL, produced at Mann Library, and HINARI, the medical counterpart to AGORA. For more information, visit: www.aginternetwork.org, or contact Mary Ochs, at: mao4@cornell.edu.

TEEAL provides affordable access to over a hundred scientific journals addressing agriculture and rural development to universities and agricultural research centers in the developing world. It is available for local area network (LAN) or as a set of compact discs (CDs). TEEAL's journal subscriptions at 1993 and continue to the present. For more information, please visit: www.teeal.org or e-mail us at: teeal@cornell.edu .

ACCI is a plant breeding Ph.D. program at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg that receives Mann Library reference and information services to both supplement the University library's existing resources and to help students when they are in the field conducting research. For more information, please contact Camille Andrews, at: ca92@cornell.edu.