Re: [CODE4LIB] Support for Small Libraries
Hi Mark, Depending on the state the college is based in, the State Library or a statewide consortia for academic libraries may offer select databases as part of membership or on a partial cost recovery basis. For instance, here in Illinois, the State Library pays for what used to be called a FirstSearch subscription from OCLC, and CARLI, Consortium of Academic Research Libraries in Illinois, provides all of its paying* governing members with a subscription to Academic Search Complete and some other EBSCO products as well as the occasional surprise purchase based on how their financial picture is for the year (I believe this is all also subsidized by state appropriations to CARLI). Normally, this kind of organizational access to membership or state services requires some sort of certification. The State of Illinois has a few certification questions, such as having a regularly-staffed library that is organized in some manner, and CARLI has a few of its own requirements (certification to offer degrees by the Illinois Board of Higher Education is central, plus state certification). Other states just negotiate to provide all residents of their state access to certain databases and sometimes those overlap with the academic library's needs. They'll have to dig around and possibly contact a local consortia or librarian to see if these kinds of options are available to the school. Best of luck, Evan Evan Boyd Chicago Theological Seminary *As a school with an FTE of 300, we pay the minimum annually, which is about $2600. They say that the fully-subsidized products we get out of our membership would cost $48,000+ if we had to pay for them on our own. Plus all the other benefits of membership in a statewide library consortia (prof. dev., networking, etc.). -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Mark Pernotto Sent: Monday, February 09, 2015 6:29 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Support for Small Libraries Greetings! I wanted to see if there were any established programs, or any advice at all, really, about assistance for small college libraries. Specifically, some kind of affiliate program for small colleges, where the small college could gain access to electronic resources of the larger institution - either through a pay-per-user method, pay by quarter/semester, or a flat fee. The small college in question has less than 50 students, but only offers graduate degrees. Any assistance on or off-list would be greatly appreciated! Mark
Re: [CODE4LIB] Solr and Koha
The forked versions of Koha from LibLime/PTFS use a Solr index. They may have some insight. evan -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 10:22 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Solr and Koha Does anybody have any direction about how to get koha export to solr so it can be utilized by black light, server power is not an issue (if needed I can dedicate one to it). Has anyone done this if so...benefits, disadvantages? We have a collection of 1 books (small but growing). Honestly this is just something to do as a learning experience, but if I commit, I commit! Thx! //Riley Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question
Matt, We actually had zero web presence until about 2006. At that time, my predecessor developed a custom website through a simple webhosting service, which was better than nothing. When I got here about two years ago, I made a case for developing a new website that was a sub-domain of the main campus site. One of my main arguments was that this would allow the Learning Commons' website to match the design/branding of the entire Seminary community. I have a separate install of Joomla on the main campus server, which is administered by our web guru. If the campus changes its web branding, the development office will make those changes for me (after consulting with me); content and structure of the library site are up to me (when I have time!). I maintain the old webhost for special projects and an install of SubjectsPlus. Both the previous and current website have been useful for outside scholars: they find out about our special collections through web searches and not through WorldCat, etc. A long-range project is developing new online guides to our special collections that are web-searchable, as we do have some really important historic materials that are hidden. Because we're denominationally-affiliated, local pastors (within about four states) and alums can check out books. If it weren't for our web presence, no one would know of the services we provide to unaffiliated folks. Like some of the other respondents, I think it would be useful for you to find out how many people get to your website's landing page before logging in and how many regularly log in. The disparity between those numbers may speak volumes. Additionally, consider what your institution's mission is and try and frame your discussion around that mission. Hope this helps, Evan Evan Boyd Assistant Librarian, Chicago Theological Seminary -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 8:41 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question Hi Code4Libbers, Slightly odd question for you academic library folks. Why does your library have its website where it is on the university site? For context, the library I currently work at has our library site hidden within the campus intranet/portal, so that students have to log into a web portal to even see the search page. This was a decision by the previous director who was here before my time and an assortment of us librarians think this is a terrible setup. So I wanted to kick out to the greater community to give us good reasons for free to the website to more general access, or help us to understand why you would bury it behind a login like they did. All thoughts, insights, and opinions are welcome, they all help us develop our thinking on this and our arguments for any changes we want to make. Thanks everyone and have a good week. Matt Sherman
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it
I'm currently experimenting with and developing a new SubjectsPlus installation. I'm the only full-time librarian at my institution and it has been mostly a breeze to install, alter, and find help from other users through its Google Group. www.ctslibrary.org/subsplus/ Now if only I could devote the time to actually completing the subject guides, that would be great! Evan Evan Boyd | Assistant Librarian Chicago Theological Seminary | 1407 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637 773-896-2452 | eb...@ctschicago.edu | commons.ctschicago.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Julia Bauder Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 9:10 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it Hi Dave, There's a list of libraries using SubjectsPlus here: http://subjectsplus.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sites_using_SubjectsPlus Julia * Julia Bauder Social Studies and Data Services Librarian Grinnell College Libraries Sixth Ave. Grinnell, IA 50112 641-269-4431 On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:07 AM, davesgonechina davesgonech...@gmail.comwrote: You guys are awesome, this is great stuff, really helpful. My impression of libguides has been fairly negative for many of the reasons mentioned, but Sean has a good point about content strategy and training, and Wilhemina has a good point about the costs of open source not always being appreciated. Has anyone tried the two platforms Andrew Darby mentioned, SubjectsPlus and Library a la Carte? That's the sort of thing I've been looking for but never found until now. Dave On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:57 PM, Sean Hannan shan...@jhu.edu wrote: Again, this not a technical issue. It's a content strategy issue. Believe me, I was where you were. I was using all kinds of javascript and CSS hacks to try to prevent people from getting creative with color. I was getting to the point of setting up Capybara tests to run against the guides to alert me to abusive uses of bold and italics. The folks creating guides are content people, not web people. Take the web out of it. Focus on the content. Pick a couple heuristics to educate them on (we picked 7 +/- 2, above the fold/below the fold, and F-shaped reading patterns). Above all, show them statistics. And not the built-in LibGuides stats, either. New vs. returning. Average time on page. Pageviews over the course of a year. Very, very, very quickly our librarians realized what content is important, what content is superfluous, and that the time the spend carefully manicuring and maintaining their guides would (and could) be better spent elsewhere. -Sean On 8/12/13 9:35 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I just have to say I have been thinking the exact same thing about LibGuides for the two years I've been using it. I feel vindicated knowing others feel the same way. At UCMO, we will be migrating to Drupal in the next several months, and I am hoping very much that I can convince people to use less LibGuides. LibGuides is great in its ease of use, but fails on just about every design principle I can think of. There have been several studies on tab blindness in LibGuides, and don't get me started on the sub-tab links that are hiding and require the user to mouse over a tab to even see what is there. I've tried telling people so many times to have just a few tabs and always to use a table of contents for the main page, but they rarely do. And it becomes just about impossible to have a consistent look and feel across your website when LibGuides allows guide creators to modify every element on the page as they see fit. People will do crazy things like putting page content in a sidebar element, something you'd never ever ever see on any website on the Internet. I tried to enforce uniform colors and column sizes across all the guides, but I was told to let it go because my coworkers wanted to be able to decide those things on a guide-by-guide basis. I've worked at two institutions that use LibGuides, and what inevitably happens is that librarians create one Uber Guide for entire subject areas (biology, religion, etc) and then create sub-pages for all the dozens of specific disciplines within those subject areas. And then, assuming the user somehow manages to find these pages, they are typically not much more than a list of links that could have easily been included on the main library website. Okay, sorry for the rant. It has been building up for several years and never had a chance to voice out. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO
