Yes, I have lots of usage statistics for UNC-Chapel Hill. I’ll get in touch with you during the week to see what will be most useful to you.

User testimonies at this point are just informal statements given during typical chat sessions. We have not done user satisfaction surveys, favoring instead reading all of our transcripts by hand.

We have done a couple of different usability studies, or rather, we’ve tested a few different LibraryH3lp chat widget options as part of larger usability studies. LibraryH3lp provides code for creating embedded widgets, pop-up widgets, and “follow-me” widgets. The idea here is that there probably isn’t a one size fits all solution, and we want people to be able to experiment and see what might work best. These widget types are described in more detail at http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/h3lp

The first usability study was to determine user preference between an embedded widget and a pop-up widget on a no-results page inside Search TRLN (union catalog). Users preferred the pop-up widget overall for a variety of reasons. They typically didn’t see much point in having chat on the no-results page in particular but liked the idea of having it as a general part of the catalog user interface. These results were presented at LIDA 2008 — I can send you a copy of that paper if you’d like.

The second usability test was to determine user preference between an pop-up widget and a “follow-me” widget inside the UNC-Chapel Hill catalog. Here, most users preferred the pop-up widget, but I think that our test setup was flawed. We asked the first four (out of five total) subjects to use the pop-up widget first, and then the follow-me widget. All of these users preferred the pop-up widget. When using the follow-me widget, they seemed to think that the usability test task was to see if they could get the follow-me widget to act like the pop-up widget, so they used the pop-out option. I had a hunch, and I asked the fifth subject to use the follow-me widget first, followed by the pop-up widget; that user strongly preferred the follow-me. So, I think that this needs more testing. :) These results have not been published.

Thanks for your interest!

-Pam.

I am conducting research at the University of Texas at Austin on the current embedded IM chat service, which uses Meebo. I have some usage statistics from the head of Reference Services and we will be conducting a series of usability studies from our end, comparing this service and Meebo.

Do you have any usage statistics from your library? Do you have any testimonies from users or any satisfaction survey results?

Thank you!

Stephanie Beene
MSIS, the University of Texas at Austin, 2009

On the other hand, perhaps there are some works that could really use five, or six, levels. A model is always just an approximation of reality, but four levels seems a pretty good compromise to me. There are always the ability for other relationships to be drawn other than the ‘level 1′ sets, to specify things further.

Although the whole model is, for better or for worse, based on a formal abstraction of traditional cataloging practice, that was mostly designed for monographs, with everything else being an ‘edge case’. But I’m not sure what to do that’s better. If there are human catalogers describing the bibliographic/documentary/information universe, we’re a lot better off if they’re all using the same formal model, so we can have all agreed on what the data we’re recording actually means. But maybe there’s a better way to do it? If there is, nobody’s supplying it.

Pricing information is available on our wiki here:

http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/wiki/Free_or_Fee_Full_Disclosure

The service is fully hosted, including a librarian’s web client that we’ll be releasing in the next few days, so it is not necessary to install anything.

Support is available through our newsgroup:

http://groups.google.com/group/libraryh3lp

Commercial support is also an option for users who desire it through Altarama’s RefChatter product:

http://refchatter.net/

HTH,

Eric

Thank you,

Kimberly A. Shreve
Technical Support Analyst – Consultant
Information, Research & Instructional Services
116 Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame
Phone: (574) 631-6640

I just printed off Martha Yee’s article, “Lubetzky’s Work Principle.” Thanks for recommending it.

Several of the authors in the Taylor book make the same point as Yee concerning the Procrustean bed of Work-Expression-Manifestation-Item. In fact, a lot of monographs would work better with just Work-Manifestation-Item, IMHO.

my task to extract data from MySQL database, which contains events, dates and authors and put the events automatically to Google Calendar.

So any help would do. If you can provide me any help, I would be very tahnkful.

Thanks
Adi

Found By Design, I have had great luck with WP 2.6. To double check, you are using a variant of the following code:
<h4>Multidisciplinary</h4>
<?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=YOUR CATEGORY NAME HERE&orderby=title&order=asc&showposts=100'); while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>
<?php the_title(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

The library Web site I was working on when I wrote this article is now up. The subject guides can be found at the following url:
http://library.lmunet.edu/databases

2.Does the software seem to have an attractive, polished user interface?
3.Does the product seem to be a popular one that is used a lot?
4.What are the system requirements for this software?
5.What is the price for the system — if there is any indication?
6.Does it support the concept of a “ticket” or the equivalent — that is, some request or issue entry?
7.Does it support custom data fields? Lots of custom data fields? (As opposed to just a few)
8.Can one customize the interfaces so the layout is tailored? How customizable is it?
9.Can one include logic of some sort to prepopulate and update the fields? If so, how is this logic written — just through a few options that are available through their interface; or through a macro language; or through .NET or other code that can access their API?
10.Can one add special custom buttons to an interface that progress the person through the workflow — for example, automatically saving and changing the status?
11.Is there an audit history that lets you see who changed what, when? If yes but just partial, which aspects?
12.Can multiple tickets (i.e. request parts that may be assigned to different people) be associated with a single problem? If so, can one ticket (or equivalent) be configured to prevent a parent ticket from being marked as Complete?
13.Can we access data stored in this system through an API?
14.Can the system support multiple types of requests, each through its own customized interface, and each with its own custom fields? For example, one for each type of department
15.What are the system’s capabilities with regard to notifying people about comments added to the ticket/request? What flexibility is available to remember, add and remove, possibly automatically, different recipients?
16.Can the ticket/request support the concept of different status codes?
17.If so, can ownership of the ticket be transferred to different groups (and then assigned or checked out by an individual within that group) as status codes change?
18.Can the system read email message replies from individuals, to attach automatically to a ticket/request?
19.Are notifications saved in the database?
20.Can a custom field be designated to hold an uploaded file, for example an Excel document?
21.Is there a concept of a queue that will show an individual all the tickets they have available to check out, that are currently associated with their department?
22.If an individual checks out a ticket/request, will the department queue (for others in their department) still show that ticket/request as needing to be checked out?
23.Can the queues be ordered according to custom criteria?
24.Can the queues be ordered according to external criteria?
25.Please include comprehensive screenshots, from any demo etc.

answers these for 1. Rutgers Workflow Management
2. Iceberg

method… just not working for me… is there something else that needs to be added?

have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>

I am using WP2.6.
Thanks

this is very good article for me, anyway there good number of content management around, but wordpress has its own features

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/x-googleclndr/

One other possible issue that popped into my head this weekend is the possibility two different records get created for the same resource at about the same time in two different libraries.

Say Susan at X makes a record for “How to conquer the world in thirty days; by Khan”. Bill at Y got the book around the same week or so and Susan hadn’t actually submitted her file (1234.mrc) upstream yet. Bill doesn’t find any existing records and creates a new one as well (24444.mrc). Now we start getting fragmentation.

The way most dvcs work on is based off filename I believe. This could be an issue if each institution assigns a record for the same source with different conventions. We could try to use an identifier with ways of correcting for conflicts with identical isbns in different books, etc.

This makes me a little worried we’d have to do some custom tweaking of a dvcs, which might be nightmarish. I suppose we’ll probably need to create custom searches and indexes anyhow from the system, but we can reuse some tools for that.

http://www.geonames.org/

Super nice!

Yes, it has a web service, as well as downloadable data. Seems worth considering for any projects that need to translate from existing controlled place vocabulary without lat/long (like LCSH!) to lat/long.

I think the main issue with using one of these programs as a subject guide tool is copyright. They are typically designed to store information instead of linking to it. As we have seen by the recent lawsuit at Georgia State University, this method would probably not be appreciated by publishers (and besides, this approach would not be able to deal well with constantly updating information). All that said, maybe with some code modifications someone could make one of these tools into a pretty good subject guide tool.

Glad my article was of some help. In case you check back, do you mind giving a summary of the concern you have at Yale? You made me curious.