Recent Updates...

Greetings. Much has transpired since the last blog post on December 1st. What follows is an updabe about new resource tools on the CCPL website, our text message service and some general musings on the Gale Apple all things IPhone library app. Note: photo comes from Apple.com

New Resources Tools.

CultureGrams and a NetLibrary Career E-Books Collection along with a coming soon resource called SmartSearch from DISCUS. We are also getting ready to roll out the Ingram Digitial Media product that will contain an opening collection of 500 plus downloadable audio books. On February 3rd, many attended training on the how this product works. We are anticipating a roll out coming out this Spring to very soon.

Text Message Service.

We have been offering text message service for the last two months. On average we get one to three text messages questions a day. Promotion has paid off. When we ran a banner ad promoting the service on the ccpl.org homepage use doubled. Time will tell how successful this will be. Harking back to when we first started email ref, it was normal to get a 100 to 150 emails a month. Currently we get about three times as many emails as we used to get ~6 or 7 years ago.

General Musings.

The Ipad may be a game changer. The Gale Iphone App (no library card required and authenication is based on your current geography) is now available. Computing devices in many ways are just getting easier to use and "just work" without much effort... If you have used the Gale Iphone App to access CCPL liscensed resource tools in the area, via wifi outside of a branch or on the 3g network, please email and let me know how it is going or place a comment on this blogpost.

CCPL Resource Tools News...

Value Line Research Center is now available to Charleston County Public Library (CCPL) card holders at home and at all branches. Previously, the product was only available at select branches. In the amount of time we have had the product, patrons have been using it at home for the first time and the response has been positive.

On the other hand, in the news category, the CCPL Books in Print database was not renewed. Gale has also lost the rights to add new issues of Consumer Reports and Consumer Reports Annual Buying guide to General OneFile and other sources.

Best Vacation Reads with Wilson Bibliographies

I'm going on vacation and want to read a great book on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806. Novelist Plus is available, but I decided to try out the old faithful of HW Wilson's Public Library Catalog. This resource is a staple or standard for many public library collection development folks. The reviews are great and generally only the best of the best make it into the catalog. It has been two years since the last time Wilson Web was profiled on this blog, and at the time I was sorting through a good Ronald Reagan biography to find and I did find a good one for a patron... We also have Wilson Web Access to the children's, junior high, and senior high core resource catalogs along with core public library fiction catalog. What will I be reading while on vacation in case your curious... David Mcullough's Bridge, Lewis and Clark Journals, and Undaunted Courage. I may not read all three, but at least I'll have some good selections. Enjoy your day...

Select Gale Databases add Great Text to Speech Tool

Recently, Gale has added a text to speech feature in a few database such as Opposing Viewpoints Reference Center, ScienceResource Center and Kids Infobits. The feature is machine based text reading which is very impressive. Previously, machine text reading was choppy, lacked timely pauses and words blended together like picante hot sauce on chocolate ice cream - it was edible but not very tastey. The new technology is much better then the old text to machine voice. In places it is a little choppy, but overal it does an improved job pausing between periods, commas and other punctuation marks as words flow off the page much better.

The ability to download MP3 sound content is available; however, there is not a way to download a marked list, each story has to be downloaded manually. Patrons may find this sound feature useful at home or in branches with headphones and sound equiped PCs. Overall, it will be great when even more content goes to MP3 audio file format friendly. Such as listen to the Fodor's City Guides found in General OneFile while walking a city. The text to speach feature will also help those who are blind, visually impaired or just want get content on the go in audio format. Kudos to Gale for this text to speech feature enhancement...

This announcement comes via the DISCUS Listserv.

Job Hunting Resource - Part 4 Furthering Your Education

This is the forth post in a series on Job Hunting and the South Carolina Pathways.org website. Previous posts on the topic are available in 1, 2 and 3. Are you looking at continuing your education in a degree or non-degree program? The Kuter “Considering Education or Training” section may help.

The education or training component covers degree and non degree programs for further areas of study you may want to consider. The schools profiled in detail are based on in person classroom settings or online throughout the United States, military installations and US territories. Various tabs such as “name and location”, “school and campus characteristics”, “programs and majors” and “admissions and costs” all allow a person to narrow there list of schools down by various criteria in one search list combined in a “see list” format.

Overall, the Kuter education component is very useful in considering furthering your education, tuition costs, application process and other preferences associated with selecting a school of your choice and desired education outcomes.

Reference Universe - Need for Speed Answered...

Reference Universe in the past was a product you could go for a cup of coffee and still be waiting on search results... Recently, search result speed was greatly enhanced. The same general search strategies of using just one or two words in a phrase still works best and it will be nice to see possibly boolean searching become available some day. Bottom line, by far the faster retrieval time of search results is the best improvement to the database outside of content since we got it a couple of years ago or so...

Hathi Trust Ditigal Library - Great Ebooks Online

The Hathi Trust provides a combined collection of public domain/content restricted titles from primarily academic libraries in ebook form online. According to the Hathi website on November 8th, 2008, there are approximately 353,000 titles like Charleston Furniture 1700-1825 which are publicly available online, while approximately an additional 2 million are online with digital rights management restrictions. The Hathi Trust now has a beta ebook search website.

WorldCat - Review in Charleston Advisor

Worldcat.org is such a practical database for Inter Library Loan checks and other big picture book, DVDs, CDs and periodical searches. There is a great review via Resource Shelf to the Charleston Advisor. The full text of the article is available in article form in Eprints. The Jeffrey Beall review covers such things as the periodical component of the database covering ~20 million articles. There is also other interesting tidbits in the review and it is worth looking at even as a refresher on what is in the database.

Yahoo! Drops Boolean Features

Yahoo! no longer supports AND and NOT search operators. Here is more from a recent Online article about the change...

"Yahoo! has dropped support for full Boolean queries. While it was never perfect when processing nested Boolean, it generally worked. Now the NOT and AND operators are gone. The OR operator still works. Since AND is the default, it is not always needed. The NOT operator can be replaced with the minus sign before a term, but nesting with parentheses fails, especially for a search like (term1 AND term2) OR (term3 AND term4). Live Search is now the only major search engine with full Boolean support.

Source: Notess, Greg R. "Search engine update.(Google Inc.)(Yahoo! Inc.)." Online 32.4 (July-August 2008): 13

Cuil, Is it Really a Cool Competitor to Google?

Yesterday, I looked at the new search engine called Cuil. After reading a few comments, I tried it out. My first search was on "home organization". The 6th link or so went to a very neat looking graphic of an organized garage and although the descriptive wording seemed disjointed I clicked it. I SHOULD have looked at the URL of something like giga.bot.50 that went to a web page I would not want to have shown to my mother. Overall, the look and feel of the results screen, a very large set of indexed websites, thumbnail images, and other features are noticeably different then the Google or Yahoo default search pages as Cuil may one day be a formidable alternative to Google . When you get time, give it Cuil a try, although use caution.

PowerSearch: Mapped Results with One Search Feature

Visual graphic groupings with text can make subject searching easier. The PowerSearch resource has recently added a feature called One Search which provides visual mapping of results. When doing a One Search with say the terms "'clothes washer'", "dryer" and "evaluations" the following map appeared. Mapping is not a speedy feature, but the extra 10 seconds on waiting for the graphics can be worth the wait. Give it a try sometime. This new enhancement was picked up by reading a recent DISCUS-L post

Federated Search Writing Contest: the $500 Question

Roy Tennant recently posted a blog entry on the $500 writing contest for "an essay that describes the landscape of federated search in 10 years." If you are so inclined, you might want to kick the tires or have an entry in the contest as your submission can have up to 1,500 words. If you want to make a submission or read the rules additional information is available at:

http://federatedsearchblog.com/category/contest/.

My initial thoughts are more historic then futuristic. Where has federated searching been in the last 10 years? Well, without revealing my own thoughts on the mater yet, I'm still trying to figure where it has been to make predictions about the future. I'm not sure yet if I will even attempt to adequately answer the question or make predictions yet, but I do say it has given me some good 'food for thought' and possibly an interesting challenge if not for entertainment value. What do you think federated search will look like in 10 years?

Live Seach Books : to Fade Away..

Microsoft on Friday announced their Live Search Books project will close and fade into regular search engine content in a blog post. Other than Google Books, Open Content Alliance, Project Guttenberg and some libraries in which free book content is going online there are just a handful of expensive large scale book scanning projects going on. There is still others in the pay for ebooks marketplace being Ebook Mall, Amazon, Overdrive, and some others in specialty niches like Safari Books. It is interesting just watching what is going on with such products as Kindle. Overall, I'm disappointed that Live Search Books project financially did not work well for Microsoft and that it is being discontinued soon.

Wilson Catalogs - A Charming Update...

A Wilson Catalogs database update recently took place and new features were added such as the ability to check the Ibistro catalog and view cover art on many recent books via Amazon.com. One of the newer features include a thesaurus search that can show terms in alternative or similar terms form such as water being: drinking water, water supply and others. In practical terms, Wilson Catalogs is a great resource for when you want to find a well reviewed book on a topic in which there are tons of resources to choose from such as a biography on Abraham Lincoln. The resource covers materials that are more likely to be circulating and not in narrowly defined criteria for inclusion such as the American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) database.

Springshare makes Database Content Interesting Again

Few people like to search for information, whereas most people just want to find and use. Yesterday, while working in the our call center, I stumbled upon reading a Computers in Library 2008 Conference blog post on rss4lib.com for a Springshare product called LibGuides and found myself impressed with Temple University's Web Guides use of the product.

LibGuides has the 'human element' with patron tagging, comments, clearly identified online help buttons with IM or email, and each page has a peronality with each editor profiled and such a good job of making the page look 'friendly' and easy to use. Libguides, seems to clearly present and differentiate sources by kind and subject by standard templates when implemented well without adding to much chaos, confusions, and complexity of the SIRSI rooms product in just comparing a few SIRSI Rooms Sites linked at the Memphis Public Library blog here, here, and here. Bottom line, the Libguides product seems substantially better at providing online user content guides for patrons.

Possible 'Second Life' Application Practical for Libraries

There is only so much technology that is frankly practical. But today, I was impressed with the insights of a new Apple Computer patent filing story on MacNN. The concept is built around the community shopping experience. I know you may be thinking what does online shopping have to do with public libraries and databases? Bare with me for a few moments for the analogy...

You walk into a box store, say Wal-Mart to compare the latest offering of digital cameras (two people recently where I work bought digital cameras) and then in the process of talking with others who are buying digital cameras find out their thoughts on say camera A over camera B. This does not happen often in the current online world of catalogs, pictures, and written reviews.

Whereas a handful of people, potentially numerous others looking at digital cameras online simultaneously in a 'second life' online library environment, are able to share insights in real time say for example (Ralph tells Sarah a 5 mega pixels is usually enough quality for an 8.5 by 11 inch photograph done well). Sometimes, there is comfort in knowing others who are looking for similar feature sets just to say hi, share in their decision making process, and find comfort in others making the same decision: buying a digital camera.

How is this model a potential application to public libraries besides shopping? One potential is the creation of a storefront of rooms, say if your interested in science you can hang out your avatar in the science room. The library component comes in where content in databases from magazine articles, books, audiobooks, music, and visual materials on topics of interest is available for use on the storefront. Then people can leave stickies, messages, and other notes on content that is sent passively and actively to users (hey, come and view the abstract of a paper on topic x or y).

We already have library content in traditional online public access catalogs and databases in online form. The difficulty in making library content visually appealing, digital rights management practical, and practically useful to a community of users.

As for community creation and utility, one thought is that users will find other users who are interested in specific areas, just like those shopping in the Apple model and can in one sense, draw upon serendipity or off topic discussions to generate new ideas and be feed a stream of the latest research in a subject.

In all practicalness such a 'second life' library product that will be the 'standard' say '900 pound gorilla' in the room so to speak will probably be developed by specialized libraries. In general, special libraries tend to be narrower in collecting subject areas, with greater depth in content, and collaboration is important as this pool of libraries and users is more likely to have the time and funds to do such an endeavor as a practical 'second life' library community.

Books & Authors is Replacing What Do I Read Next?

The Books & Authors database will be replacing the What Do I Read Next? resource as part of the SC DISCUS initiative. The announcment was made recently and is on the SC-DISCUS listserve. The Books & Authors database is a dramatic enhancement in navigation and searchability in comparison to the older resource.

Screencasts of Database on SC Discuss

Screen cast tutorials of databases are being placed on the SC Discus website. The first one covers the LitFinder database with emphasis on Spanish Language Poetry. It will be interesting to see how many additonal screencasts go up on the various database. I'm not sure how effective it will be for patrons (as most folks will be using computers without sound), but will be of primay use for staff.

Book Review Index - Search by Format type Easily

Audiobooks, ebooks, periodicals and book reviews by format type just got easier to find with Book Review Index Online. In many cases, it is a real pain to find a review based on the format of the title in formal review sources. Amazon is great for mass market or niche titles and sometimes format can run over various editions, but for expensive reference materials, Book Review Index Online is great to have for standard review sources. There is the annoying factor though that the results page is in index form, but it is an improvement from having to just guess on the format type of an article title or go through several entries that are not in the desired format. Bottom line, Book Review Index is a great sources for finding reviews on titles by format so much quicker than before.

6 Keys to a Satisfied Reference Customer Experience

Okay, I'm not going to sound like a 2 AM infomercial specialist on creating satisfied customers. However, the latest issue of Reference User Services Quarterly has a fascinating article on virtual reference key traits that are more likely to generate satisfied users of reference services. The study was based on formal application of RUSA and IFLA service standards... The formal title, and link to the full text of the of the article is "Effects of Librarians' Behavioral Performance on User Satisfaction in Chat Reference Services."

The following are bullet points pulled directly from the article. "Chat reference services were perceived to be more satistifying to the patrons when librarians:

* used patron's name during the reference interview;
* communicated more receptively and listened more carefully;
* search with or for the patron;
* provided pointers;
* asked the patron whether the question was completely answered; and
* asked the patron to come back if they needed further assistance."

If you want to predict how likely a user is going to feel satisfied by service received what follows are some statisically measured and tested behaviors straight from the article that for patrons are good indicators of higher level of satisfcation based primarly on the "RUSA Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Services Providers" of a higher level of satisfied user.

* answered? - asking patrons if their questions had been completely answered
* offering pointers - for example offering pointers, detailed search paths, URL's and names of resources to find the answer;
* come back - encouraging patrons to return if they have further questions;
* searching - searching with or for patrons by explaining search strategies and sequences and reformulating search strategies;
* listening - receptive and cordial listening.