Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Next Generation Catalogs: SIUCat Beta Search

Yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education had an article about library catalogs. One of the open source solutions mentioned in the article was VuFind, the program behind SIUCat Beta Search and behind I-Share's VuFind search.

The Virtual Library Group at Morris Library is looking at some of the other alternatives listed in the article. As the article mentions, the commercial options can cost tens of thousands of dollars each year. Customized open source software can be just as expensive because the programmers need to be paid. Morris Library has an added complication from I-Share. As part of our arrangement to get easy access to the books from other university libraries in Illinois, we all share a catalog. Almost any change that we make to SIUCat is constrained by this (otherwise awesome) arrangement. Nevertheless, the potential in some of these tools could make it a lot easier to find library materials.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Bargain Books: Honest Abe Ongoing Book Sale is Back

For several years, Morris Library, through Friends of Morris Library, raised money by selling books. Usually these were books that people donated to the library that duplicate items already in the collection or do not fit the scope of the library's collections. This book sale has been on hiatus during the library's renovation, but it's back now.

The Honest Abe book sale is on the honor system. The books for sale are on display on a bookshelf. Suggested donation amounts are posted near the books, and purchasers leave the money in a drop box at the end of the shelf. Books for sale are shelved next to the bronze Lincoln head in the main corridor on the first floor of Morris Library.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

UPDATED: Outstanding Teacher and Outstading Scholar Lectures Coming Soon

The auditorium in Morris Library will be busy on Sept. 28 and 29.

On Sept. 28, the inaugural (and I hope annual) university outstanding teacher lecture will be held in the auditorium at 3:30 PM. This event has been postponed due to illness. New date TBA is Oct. 26.

On Sept. 29, the annual university outstanding scholar lecture will be held in the auditorium at 3:00 PM.

These events are a chance learn from and congratulate the university's 2009 outstanding teacher, Kim Harris and the university's 2009 outstanding scholar, Carl Faingold.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Browser Shortcut for Web of Science

The Thomson Reuters sales representative visited the library yesterday to tell us about new developments in Web of Knowledge. The development that I liked best was the Web of Knowledge browser search extension.

This tool puts Web of Science into the browser’s search bar for Firefox 2 and above and Internet Explorer 7 and above. A search in Web of Science can be done directly by using the search box in the top right corner of a browser. There’s no need to go to the Web of Knowledge Web site or to navigate through the library’s Web site first.

There are a couple limitations to the search extension.

It only will work for on-campus computers or computers connected to the university’s VPN. Off campus users not on the VPN still need to go through the library’s Web site to authenticate.

The search is sent as a “Topic” search. This works fine for searching for information on a topic and for searching for an article by title. It does not work for searching by author because “Topic” searches don’t include the author field. Even a search for a particular article will fail if the author’s name is included in the search.