Margaret and I have been making some improvements to the rss feed for the New Titles list.
Margaret has now got the programme to work so that you can set up an rss feed for the New Titles list for each branch library. Also the rss feed is now returning the list of titles, instead of the link to the page that displays this same list. These now display very nicely in LibGuides.
To check that it was working the rss feeds were recreated today, meaning that the feeds now display the lists for the last 7 days, rather than from the last time the new titles displays were created. However this will be corrected overnight and the rss will be back in synch with the Thursday to Thursday week.
It had been pointed out that diacritics were not displaying properly in remote script boxes within LibGuides, even though the same content displayed well on the Library’s site.
I’ve talked to SpringShare about the problem and they’ve now found and implemented a fix.
I have sent a message to the support people at LibGuides, reporting that we are experiencing some quite major issues with speed, and the failure of some edits to work.
I’ll let you know of their response, but please keep reporting problems to Library IT. It would be particularly useful to get more details of the exact problems you are having, and whether you think that they are worse this year since the upgrade to LibGuides.
I’ve just put up the new banner for LibGuides. This was created for us by the UC web team, and fits the design specs for an external application on our web site. It continues the abstract theme also used on the catalogue and the Research Repository.
As previously indicated in an earlier posting, the way news items for our users is being handled has now changed.
All news items will now be put on a Library News blog, with some items put into the homepage or urgent category displaying in the News section of the Library’s home page.
There will be a new rss feed, so an item has been put on the current one, informing users of the change and the new feed.
I believe that I’ve tidied up all the old pages and links to the old pages, but please let me know if you find anything that I’ve missed.
There are problems this morning with connecting to the Internet. Some people may also find that they are unable to log in. ICTS are working on the problem.
Now that exams are finished, it’s the time to make any such changes. I’m proposing to implement this later next week after training relevant people in how to add postings. If you want to have another look, please go to the original posting (linked above) where you can read about it and follow the link. Please get back to me with any questions or comments.
One consequence is that the home page will change from a shtml page to a php page, meaning the url will change. However I will put a redirect on the web site, so that existing links and bookmarks will go directly to the new page.
When you are creating new LibGuides pages, if you are adding links for resources that are already in the catalogue, please talk to me first. This includes lists of databases, journals, books, websites etc.
Also, please don’t copy and paste the contents of any dynamic pages into LibGuides. We can reproduce the contents of a dynamic page in LibGuides, but not by copying and pasting. Again, talk to me. A rule of thumb – if the url of the page you want to reproduce has .php at the end, it is a dynamic page.
I will be creating some documentation about dynamic content in LibGuides, and possibly offering some training sessions, but at this stage I am still working on how to do this and how these pages will look.
I see that in the template for the subject pages on LibGuides, there’s a books tab, which should include the text about finding books for a course, and the search box which goes directly to the catalogue and searches for the entered course code.
This won’t work without a bit of added javascript. So when you’ve set up your course page, send an email to Library IT, asking them to add the necessary html to call in the coursecode script.
You’ve probably noticed that the PreciseMail Quarantined message has changed. It now has a link beside each quarantined message (Release this message) that makes it much easier to release individual messages. However, when you click on this link, as well as releasing the message it brings ups a PreciseMail browser window acknowledging that the message has been released. This can cover up your email window, which can be disorientating. Just close this browser window to go back to your mail application – the released message should appear there eventually.
PreciseMail still says at the top of the message that to release a message you should reply to PreciseMail, deleting everything except the Message: line of the message that you want released. This does still work, except that it seems to be much harder to delete the lines following the Message: line. I found that if you send back the whole entry for the message you want released, without deleting the other lines it is still released successfully. I have emailed the Help Desk asking them to modify the instructions at the top of the PreciseMail email.
I think this covers all the changes – if you are experiencing something different, please add a comment!
