OPAC Reservations

Hi Everyone,

I'm sure you've all noticed or been asked about the way the OPAC says an item is on an open shelf when someone makes a reservation even though all copies are actually on loan. This is quite confusing for the students so I asked Paul to investigate this.

A quick fix suggested by Ex Libris was to hide this text completely, so it should no longer be showing. Of course, this could be confusing when a student tries to reserve an item that is On Shelf. However, although there is nothing that first displays when a student tries to reserve an On Shelf item, as soon as they click Go to make the request the following message displays in red at the top of the screen:
Item or like copy is on shelf. Cannot place hold request.

I hope you'll agree that this makes things much clearer and more intuitive for the users, so thanks to Paul for sorting this out.

James.

JISC E-books Added to OPAC

Hi Everyone,

Sandy has now added records to the OPAC for the 36 e-books that JISC have made available to us as part of their 2 year project to monitor e-book usage.

There are 7 Media Studies titles, 5 Business/Management titles, 14 Engineering titles and 10 Medical titles. The medical titles are provided via the Ovid platform and all the others are via MyiLibrary. If you haven’t seen a full list of the titles and would like to, please have a look at the document ‘full-list-of-e-books’ which can be found on the w: drive (W:\Team Work Areas\Electronic Resources\E-Books\JISC E-books Observatory Project).

All the titles have an on-campus URL, which should take you through without needing to login and an off-campus URL, which takes you in via Athens.

If you have any questions about these titles or about the project, just ask.

Thanks,

James.

MyiLibrary e-books in OPAC

Hi Everyone,

Good News! Sandy has now managed to add all the MyiLibrary books to the OPAC, so you should now be able to find any of these titles by searching in the usual way.

When linking to an e-resource on the standalone OPACs you will get a ‘Page Cannot be Displayed’ message, as these machines are restricted to just Library Catalogue use. We’ve asked Paul to try get a message to display when a user clicks on a link to an e-resource, telling them that they need to use a networked PC. However, in the meantime please advise users about this if they ask you.

Sandy is hoping to add the ebrary titles at some point in the next month, when she has received the new records from ebrary.

Thanks,

James.

CU Portal Hot Links

Hi Everyone,

A link to "eLibrary / Library Catalogue" has been added to the Hot Links on the right-hand-side of the CU Portal home pages. This takes you to the eLibrary and the OPAC can then be linked to from here. This does duplicate the eLibrary link at the top of the screen, but as it’s in an eye-catching position seemed worth repeating. Also, it seemed like a good idea to mention the Library Catalogue on the home page.

I think we should still promote the eLibrary link at the top of the page in demos as this link displays wherever the user is in the portal. However, it’s good to get another prominent link to our resources on the home page.

Thanks,

James.