At the Brown Bag meeting on open access organised by Deborah at EPS, we discussed how to include more open access resources into Summon. Peter H followed up on this and as a result we will be adding Biomed Central, Pubmed Central, DOJ, Erudit and a few other sources to both Summon and the catalogue, and Project Gutenberg to Summon.

Following on from this, I have set up two blue skies session to discuss how we can get the best out of Summon. The first 30 minutes will have demos on how Summon works, including Peter H showing how he adds resources for our users into Summon, the last 30 minutes will be an open discussion. It is interesting to note that the use of the catalogue has fallen by over 50% this year as our users move to Summon instead.

Please register for the session below. They will be in the L5 Training Room.

Wednesday 15 Sept 2pm
Thursday 16 Sept 11am

Cheers, Anne

With the new Microsoft alliance it is worth having a look at this site http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ as it is likely to be promoted around the university. Type in “Tim Bell” select his name to see publications and citation rates. Try the visual explorer on the left to see who he works with. This requires Silverlight which is now on Library staff machines, and we have asked ICTS to add it to the student install. Other staff will need to ask their IT support to load it. Cheers, Anne

Summon will have new Contextual Facets in the upgrade happening this week. Summon will now expose 4 new facets: Author, Genre, Region and Time Period when the result set is limited explicitly to “Items in the library catalog” or with the Content Type of “Book.” This allows for greater display of the curated metadata from the library’s MARC records in the context of our catalog. There are other times when targeted facets become useful in managing records based on the nature of the result set. Look for more Contextual Facets soon.

You can see how this new feature works at the Summon Preview Site:
http://preview.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?s.q=renewable+energy&s.fq[]=SourceType%3A%28%22Library+Catalog%22%

Here is a screencast that reviews the new feature:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsAo0K2-H-A
Cheers, Anne

Library IT is looking to upgrade DSpace to 1.6.2 next Thursday, 5 August. This will bring in an number of enhancements to embargoes, authority control and statistics, although they may not be available from day one. DSpace will not be available for Library Staff adding material on Thursday, but should be available for users for most of the time. Cheers, Anne

A project has been setup to investigate, choose, install and implement an interloans management system that will provide some un-mediated interloans together with staff tools to enable efficient management of the interloans service, both incoming and outgoing. This project is in the Library 2010 Strategic Plan and has funding in the current budget.

Library users will use a discovery interface (such as Te Puna) which will enable them to find resources where possible, and where they are not available, to easily lodge an interloans request. Some requests will be able to go directly to suppliers (un-mediated). Users would be able to request, review, renew and monitor progress of their requests. Library staff will have a single management interface for incoming and outgoing interloans and will be able to reuse of information added by users. The new system be able to collect statistics, and would provide tools for charging. This is also an opportunity to investigate collaboration with other libraries in this area and options for consortia borrowing or purchasing.

The Project team includes Sue Thompson, Jessica McVicar, Peter Kennedy, Cynthia Bishell Joan Simpson, Anne Scott (Project Manager) and Heather Jenks (Project Sponsor). There is a requirements document in the project folder on K:\projects\interloans_self_service that is being created on the needs for the system. There will be an opportunity for interested people to see demonstrations of any proposed system.

Feedback is welcome to any member of the project team or as comments. Cheers, Anne

Naxos has been added to Summon. It is the first significant audio database added and there are some issues as it has to use a different way of linking. Some of the links are not resolving correctly yet, giving the message “Album Information is currently not available”. Also the way the URLs are embedded means that the links will not work off campus at this point. Cheers, Anne

The Summon Advisory Board is meeting in the US soon. This is an opportunity for us to provide feedback on Summon and what we would like to see changed. Some of the things on my list are:
More NZ content – (I have been having discussions with NLNZ and DigitalNZ on changing their policies to allow external harvesting by vendors as previously INNZ was reported as the most wanted database. I have also asked NLNZ to ask their vendor if we can use the NZ book covers via Summon)
More flexibility with availability – eg not saying “full text available” for print or archives
Improvements to Endnote formatting
Statistics – even the most basic ones would be better than nothing
Please add any other things that you would like to see.

Soon Summon will be loading citation information from Web of Science and the NAXOS Music Library

Also Sue McKnight said yesterday that users had reported a number of times that they did not know what MultiSearch was or what it could do for them. Please make sure that you communicate to your users that this is available, particularly academics and postgraduates as it still may be relevant for them. Some of them still seem to remember 360 search and have not tried again.

Thanks, Anne.

Lin and Shane officially move to the Operations and Infrastructure Group this Friday, 4 June 2010, although they will physically remain in the Library. Staff in the Desktop Team are assigned tasks via the ICT Service Desk and must log everything they do so from 4 June Library staff should log jobs through the ICT Service Desk.

Library IT will no longer maintain the PCs in the Library, including the Library Training Rooms. Regular visits to branches will continue.

To request a job email the ICT Service Desk for:

1. Problems with PCs, software or other equipment such as barcode readers
2. Setting up equipment for teaching
3. Printing including MFDs
4. Support for large tv monitors
5. EFTPOS issues
6. Installing software for classes
7. Recovering files

In the changeover period please contact Library IT for advice if you have any concerns about whom to contact, or copy Library IT into the email to the ICT Helpdesk. Peter and I will have a weekly meeting with Lin, Shane and Mark Andrews to go over any issues so if there are any ongoing problems please raise them with Library IT. Anne.

There will be a morning tea for Lin and Shane on Thursday at 10.10am to celebrate their contribution to the Library over the years and their move to the Operations and Infrastructure Group as part of Project Star. The Library will provide a cake but if you wish to provide a plate please feel free. Cheers, Anne

Serials Solutions are visiting today and will discuss Summon from 11am- 12 noon in the L3 Committee Room, Central Library. Feel free to come alone. Sorry about the short notice, my fault. Cheers, Anne