Bad Ideas: Good Riddance To...

The Library Marketing Committee continues to develop the brand for the instant messenger (IM) system that we intend to launch in the fall. The theme has been established, but we did discuss alternatives. One, that I am glad never saw the light of day, was: Digger, The Information Mining Gopher.

Click the image of Digger for a larger view:












The idea behind Digger was to create the absolute last thing that any of us would like to see. You know, present the worst possible ideas to the boss and hopefully he/she will pick the one you actually want. I hate myself for co-conceiving the little 5|-|17. My original notion was the iconic southern Alberta miner and relating it to "data mining" (which I did like); my co-worker (Valarie) suggested the gopher to add a cutsie-poo factor into the equation - this equals nausea and self-loathing.

Though I dislike the concept, it was not entirely without thought. The concept is based on two southern Alberta themes - the Richardson's Ground Squirrel (a.k.a, the gopher) and miners (since coal mining is still prevalent in the region) - and the notion of data mining. Despite the thought process that went in to it, the concept is still better off dead.

Another concept that I floated included a lighthouse theme. The obvious connotations include: illuminating the darkness to locate information, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria - where the famous Library of Alexandria was located.

As for the actual theme, well you will have to wait and see. It is, as the British might say, a little sexier.

General Update - Relais & Website

I have uploaded the latest revisions to the Relais self-registration pages. The last version went horribly wrong somehow, and turned out looking worse and less functional than the first. I do not know when they will be uploaded to Relais's servers and ready for testing, so it is a matter of being patient. If this version fails, I will call Grant and hopefully we can sort out what is going wrong.

I finished a few minor tweaks on the Vera Bracken Library's homepage. Changes include:

• Google site search has been removed and replaced by a widget that searches the OPAC. I developed several different versions, but went with the advanced drop box version for now.
  
• The XML [] icon for our news feed has been replaced by the more common RSS icon developed by Microsoft - this icon [] has become the default icon for all manner of web news feeds (e.g., Atom, RSS, etc.).
• A new link (Site Map/Search) has been posted as well. The site search feature that was previously on the homepage has been moved under this link's location. A site map was also added - I would call it less than pretty.

I am not sure on how keen I am about the Site Map/Search page or the OPAC search tool. I might scrap both by the end of the week. My major concern is that the homepage is getting a little cluttered; to this end, I will explore alternative layouts with Spry.

General Update - Relais & E-Books

The latest communication from Relais tells us that our last revision of the Relais self-registration pages will be posted tomorrow. We wait with bated breath.

I finished correcting the 70+ e-book URLs in the catalogue. Patrons (faculty, staff, and students) now have the ability to access e-books from their homes. Additionally, I also created a tool that will search exclusively for e-book titles. You can find out more about our e-book content at: http://www.mhc.ab.ca/library/ebooks.html. The search tool can also be found on this page.

ID Computer & Wireless Woes

STAFF ID MACHINE

We are having some issues with our designated staff photo ID machine. It appears that the image/profile has become corrupted. The consequence is that previous system settings have been lost and cannot be reconfigured to our original specifications. Computer Services did inspect the machine and managed to restore our POISE connections, but little else. They will continue to explore the issue.

Here is what you CAN do:

• issue staff ID cards
• view student information in POISE
• shut down and log out via Ctrl+Alt+Delete

Here is what you CANNOT do:

• issue student ID cards (of any sort - standard and intern)
• shut down and log out via START menu
• retain changes to settings that you made

Start-up Issues:

• warning about corrupt profile
• camera tries to reinstall itself (not required)
• unnecessary icons on desktop (cluttered)
• clutter in PhotoID Production module - all windows (including card previews) are open

While at the station, I was sifting through the drawers and discovered a bundle of "Dec 2007" stickers. We are getting some students in for the Fall Semester and they can be issued these stickers now.

WIRELESS NETWORK

The entire wireless network is down across campus. The cause is still being determined. This is not uncommon considering the campus wide power outage over the previous weekend, and the unexpected power outage that we faced from last night's storm. Computer Services continues to investigate, but no time has been given for completion.

Student Information System Meeting - 28 June 2007

In the category of Things Should Have Taken 5 Minutes to Do...

I attended the Student Information System (SIS) meeting on 28 June 2007. The meeting was scheduled from 9:oo a.m. to 10:30 a.m., but barely lasted 20 minutes.

The major points were that: (a) more than 160 processes are performed by the current SIS and need to be performed on the new system, (b) representatives from Campus Management are now on campus and working on data and systems migration to the new SIS, (c) maintaining the working time line is important - failure to meet objectives will impact future events in terms of coordinating personnel, (d) the SIS is scheduled to go live on 1 July 2008, and (e) progress can be tracked online.

You can track information on the SIS's development by clicking here. [I am not sure if is accessible from home. It is on the Blackboard server and has the HTTPS protocol.]

General Update - Bowker's Book Analysis System & Computer Systems

We made some progress in the Bowker's Book Analysis System. It has been at the low end of my priority list, but the system seems to be working. Thanks to their technical support staff for locating the error of my ways - I did not manually enter the .csv extension to the files that I was naming. At any rate, the Medicine Hat Campus's AV, Circulating, Reference, and Complete LC [Medicine Hat and Brooks Campuses] collections holdings have been uploaded and processed. They are ready to be sifted through by the librarians.

I am not a huge of fan of Excel 2007, but it did come in handy when creating a CSV file for Bowker's. You really have to love it when it goes from having 65,536 rows of information that can be addressed to 1,048,576 rows. This will make next year's inventory a breeze.

Most of the issues involving the Millennium LIS have been resolved. There are a few minor issues still, but they will be cleaned up in short order. We should see little impact on library operations.

Speaking of "impact" - staff will be preparing to "pull the plug" on computer systems in the library this afternoon. We will have to unplug all electronic machinery in preparation for the annual power outage that we were initially led to believe was last weekend. It would suck to return Monday morning and discover our computers fried from a power surge; it is good thing that we are so conscientious.

General Update - Relais and Millennium LIS

We did get some good news with regards to our system today. The public side of things seems to be functioning properly now. The catalogue, ILL, and home authentication seem to be working properly as of this writing.

The bad news is that some staff functions are still not fully operational. We are limping along and awaiting a system back-up. It sounds as though everything is being rebuilt from scratch at the UofL. Thanks to a very regimented backup process our core information has been preserved. It now appears to be a matter of tweaking systems until the new parameters are inline with the previous parameters.

We did get a chance to see the latest version of our Relais ILL self-registration pages and they are coming along nicely. I made a few more changes and resubmitted it to Relais. It looks like we will be able to go live in the next couple of weeks with the service. We are about 3 months overdue and everyone is eager to tear into the service.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

THE GOOD NEWS
The most recent edits were made to the Relais ILL self-registration pages. A problem with the CSS and JSPs has hopefully been resolved. The package was zipped and transmitted to Relais for posting on the test servers.

THE BAD NEWS
A clerical error led us to believe that the previous weekend was the Medicine Hat Campus's scheduled annual power outage. This was not the case - it will now occur from the 20th-22nd of July. Campus-wide services are expected to return to normal by Monday morning. [I think I heard that last week. Which lets me nicely segue to...]

MORE BAD NEWS
Day 5. The Millennium LIS continues to be inaccessible. There is still no end in sight. Stay tuned.

General Update - System Down and Shopping

We continue to slog along as our Millennium LIS remains down for the 5th straight day. The UofL's technicians continue to work on the problem, but we are getting conflicting messages. We were initially informed that the problem was with the LIS's operating system, and later that it was a combination of hardware and software; however, their website suggests that it has to do with renovations being done in the server rooms. Whether one caused the other is unclear at this time. What we know is that this all began on Friday, July 13th.

I am not superstitious, but if Friday the 13ths cause such a flap amongst the populace, then perhaps we should do away with it - not unlike how some buildings omit the 13 from their elevator buttons and floor numbering scheme. What would we use in place of the 13? Perhaps 12a, 12th -the-Sequel, 14th-the-Prequel, Pre-14th. Perhaps we should just omit the number - 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, etc.; so months having 30 days will end on the 31st, while months with 31 days will end on the 32nd.

In the meantime I was able to perform some administrative tasks, Web work, and AV shopping with Barb. Shopping for AV equipment is not as much fun as I hoped. You have to try and keep the technology "cutting edge", accessible enough for students and staff to use, as well as cost effective. The fun really starts as you haggle with sales people and shop around for the best prices. Once you have have the products picked out, then you have to arrange for Finance to create purchase order number for the selected vendor. Yes, shopping really can be work; but I still get to play with cool new toys in the process - things that I could not afford otherwise.

Admittedly, Barb and I took a detour through Tim Horton's [the drive through was on the road we were traveling] for an Ice Cap - after all, we have to beat these mid-30°C temperatures somehow. I think we were the envy of the college's Center Core as people salivated and inquired where we got them from - in the past Tim Horton's has served coffee on campus. We were not without hardship though, the vehicle we were driving in did not have cup holders. What auto manufacturer builds a vehicle without cup holders? I will not say the name of the company, but honestly, what were they thinking? Or is that not thinking?

Time to get back to working on Relais. We are making some headway in developing the online self-registration pages, and updated pages will be posted by the end of this week - I hope.

AAQ - Databases & Learning Difficulties in Children

Hello and thank you for using the “Ask A Question” service.

You are seeking alternative search terms, methods, or database resources that can assist you in locating journal articles related to difficulties that children have learning to reading. If possible, we suggest that you visit the Vera Bracken Library in person, but we can try and help you fill in some blanks in the meantime. Admittedly, your home institution has a deeper resource well than our own, but we will try to answer your inquiry in a more universal context.

You have developed a good list of terms, but we might be able to broaden them further. Our initial keywords are: children, reading, and difficulties. For children, we can use terms and phrases such as: child*, kid*, adolescent*, youth*, juvenile*, etc. You could also try specifying specific age categories/groups as well (i.e., “age 5”, “6 years old”, “grade 1”, preschool, kindergarten, etc.).

You might notice the asterisk (*) symbol trailing some words (or incomplete words) in the previous paragraph. The * (and sometimes a question mark (?)) is often used in search truncation. The idea is to broaden your search as much as possible with this system. So when you enter:”child*”, the database will locate variations such as: child, children, child’s, childhood, childlike, etc. This could potentially save you a lot of time searching for variant terms.

Additionally, you could use a Boolean operator such as OR to locate terms that are alike. For example, you could enter: (child* OR kid* OR adolescent*) [between parenthesis] and most databases will be able to understand this search logic. Again, the idea is to make shorter work of all your search terms.

Phrase searching is also important; by encapsulating two or more words between quotation marks, most search engines (i.e., library catalogues, databases, and Web searches (e.g., Google, Yahoo, etc.)) will look for those word groupings. Some search engine (such as EBSCOhost databases) assume phrase searching if AND, OR, and NOT (Boolean Operators) are not used between words.

Additional terms that you can employ in place of reading are: read*, literacy, cognition, “cognitive development”, “mental development”, comprehen*, understand*, education*, etc. Terms that we can employ for difficulties include: disability*, problem*, hard, hardship*, hinder*, trouble*, etc. These terms could be used in a more general search. Also consider focusing your search on specific conditions such as: dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, “auditory processing disorder”, etc.

Additional phrases and terms that you could use are: “learning disabilities”, “reading disability”, “language disorders”, “school children”, “short-term memory”, “literacy interventions”, “neurological disorders”, or “child development”.

It will be important to mix and match terms from each of the three categories. Start simple, using one word at a time. Add and substitute additional terms as desired. You will be sure to get more diverse results lists by doing so. If you want to focus on geographic locales, consider using terms such as: canada, alberta, united states, north america, etc. [NOTE: Capitalization of proper nouns is not necessary.]

Since you are familiar with EBSCO databases, we can offer the following suggestion to save you some time. Once you are in one of their databases, select the “Choose Databases” tab near the top of the page. Once you are in there, you can select whichever databases will best suit your particular search by selecting each database’s associated checkbox and clicking “Continue” (at the top and bottom of the list) to proceed. From the EBSCO resources available from the Vera Bracken Library (Medicine Hat College) we selected: Academic Search Complete (big brother of Academic Search Premier), ERIC, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Humanities International Complete, and Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection – the U of L will naturally have more available. You will return to your search window, at which point we selected the “Advanced Search” tab near the top of the page.

In the “Advanced Search” window, we filled out the form as follows: SEARCH BOX 1: child*; SEARCH BOX 2: (literacy or read*); SEARCH BOX 3: difficult*; selected the “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals” checkboxes under each database’s heading (if available); select the “Also search for synonyms and plurals” checkbox (under the “Expand your search to:” heading near the bottom of the page; NOTE: the additional expanded search options). If you click the “Search” button, you should retrieve over 3,800 abstracts/citations. How relevant they are will vary, so select the “Relevance” option under the “Sort by:” drop-box at the top of the results list. Hopefully the more relevant articles will appear closer to the top.

View the articles and redo the search as desired. If you need the articles “here and now”, select the “Full Text” option at he initial search page. If you do this, you will not have to look any farther than the databases to locate articles. If you need articles ordered in, consider using your home library’s Interlibrary Loan Service (http://www.uleth.ca/lib/borrowing/display.asp?PageID=51). Medicine Hat College and the Medicine Hat Public Library also offer this service, but you might have to pay additional fees to retrieve this information. Medicine Hat College Library Services does have some advanced tools that you can take advantage of (which are not offered by the local public library) but you will have to be on campus to take advantage of them. Ask the Information Desk about the “Find It” service (“Find It” is analogous to the U of L’s “Find Full Text” icon link that you might see in some of their ESBSCO databases).

Additional databases that you use (other than those provided by EBSCO) include: CBCA Education & ProQuest Education Journals, Project MUSE, OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition, Academic OneFile, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All of these are available in the Vera Bracken Library at Medicine Hat College.

There are probably some additional tips and tricks that we can offer, but this should be sufficient to get you started. Please consider visiting the Vera Bracken Library (http://www.mhc.ab.ca/library/) at the Medicine Hat College campus for additional assistance, or try these tips in available databases offered by the U of L. Many of the other major database vendors (Gale, ProQuest, and Wilson) offer excellent resources that offer similar functionality to EBSCO, even if they appear slightly different.

For future reference, please do not type your name in the “Ask A Question” box. This is to protect your privacy.

Thank you again for using the “Ask A Question” service. If you need more help, please use the service again or see the Information Desk in the Vera Bracken (Medicine Hat College) Library (Phone #: (403) 529-3867; Toll Free #: 1 (866) 282-8394 ext. 3867).

AAQ#: 31601

Is this really me?!

If you work in a library, then you might be familiar with Unshelved. It offers unflinchingly humourous insights into what it is like to work in a library. I have been told that the following strip eerily represent me (to some degree).

Click on the images for a larger view:

Yes, anything to get out of a meeting.

No, I would not even think of doing that. Would I?

MHC Library Quotes #3

During a birthday celebration, an odd exclamation could be heard...

"Penises!" - female staffer

This was said by one female staffer to another during the photo sessions - foregoing the traditional, "Say:'Cheese!'" Laughter was had by all.

P.S., I have the video to prove this.

General Update - Relais and Web Work

I have been busy again today. The New Materials lists were created and posted for this month, and I have been working on cleaning up e-book URLs in our catalogue. Soon we should have our full collection of 3,500+ e-books available for home access by faculty, staff, and students.

Relais posted our initial test pages for the ILL patron self registration system. They turned out better than I thought, but I see there is still work to be done. I will be working on those files tomorrow and hopefully have them uploaded a day or two after.

Blog & OPAC Modifications

It is the start of the work week and it is off to a mad rush. I made a couple modifications to my personal blog (the one you are reading) and the Medicine Hat College Library Service Blog. A weather widget, courtesy of Environment Canada, was added to each. If you want to build a WeatherLink for your website, click here [sorry, Canada only].

To make OPAC entries clearer in the browse-results lists, the results' numbers were aligned right, highlighted in a light green with a dark green right-hand border. You can view a sample by clicking here. I was hoping to create a different effect, but the CSS does not allow for it. My hope is that this new highlight will make it easier for patrons to see where an entry begins and ends. A couple of other minor changes were made, but they are minutia and not worth discussing.

A couple of minor fires were put out along the way - information desk questions (two if you can believe it - one of which was a complex question about wireless networking in the college) and we discovered how to edit PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional.

And so the day continues...

Relais Self-Registration & Bowker's Book Analysis System Progress

This week was a busy one for me - if you call three days a "week".

I modified the Relais ILL source code for the ILL self-registration. It employs a combination of CSS, HTML, and JSP. I am familiar with two of the three, but JSP is new to me. The college Webmaster tells me that I am on the right track, but I am not so sure. The folders were zipped and transmitted to Relais. We should know if my work was successful later this week - Relais will post the modified code to its test server. In the meantime, I will keep my fingers crossed.

My technical contact with Bowker's Book Analysis System tells me that one of the two files I uploaded was formatted correctly. Their system tells me that the files are still being processed. I suspect that something is amiss, since it has been processing a relatively small file for more than a week. I will be contacting them later today and find out if this is normal. Perhaps I did not map the categories/headings properly, but I doubt that. It is probably a case where pulling data from MARC fields was not as "clean" as either of us desired.

The Circulation Clerks finished my desired modifications to the NetLibrary holdings' URLs in the catalogue. The next step for me is to build a custom interface to search for e-books from our library pages. This is a low priority, since the OPAC can handle that chore for now.

Next week will be busy. Thankfully there will be five days to accomplish some tasks.

Spell Check in OPACs is Active

I activated the Spell Check feature in our OPACs this morning. It has been on the staging/test server for the last 4-6 weeks. I did not find it aesthetically pleasing and could not make alterations without the UofL's consent. We experienced some delays in activation because many of my contacts at the UofL were on sabbatical or vacation in June. Fortunately they returned and agreed with my assessment, and I consequently made the alterations and activated it on the live/public servers.

Give the new feature a spin and let me know what you think - it is active on the Basic Keyword Search (@Vera Bracken Library/Brooks Catalogue; @Brooks Catalogue) and Advanced Keyword Search (@Vera Bracken/Brooks Catalogue; @Brooks Catalogue) pages. It is not quite Google, but it is a much improved first step. The activation of this feature should be last of the major OPAC upgrades for a while. It will mostly be a matter of house keeping and refinement of the CSS.

All that I have to do is hope that I will not have to revise the OPAC for a few more years.

Happy Canada Day - Mr. Canoehead

In honour of Canada Day, I wish to resurrect the memory of a long lost Canadian hero - Mr. Canoehead; our unofficial aluminum crime fighter.

Mr. Canoehead is the product of the comedy troupe known as The Frantics. For a brief time in the mid-1980s, The Frantics had a sketch comedy show on the CBC called Four on the Floor (@IMDB.com; @Wikipedia). Mr. Canoehead was one of their reoccurring characters that highlighted this quintessentially Canadian group/program.

Though the program was short lived, members of The Frantics have gone on to influence other great Canadian programs such as: The Red Green Show, History Bites, and Puppets Who Kill.

You can view the first installment of Mr. Canoehead below [NOTE: Press the play button, otherwise you will be redirected to the clip's YouTube page.]:

You can view more Mr. Canoehead videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Ransolix

Enjoy! Happy Canada Day!