Tag: OPAC

Coverflow in the OPAC: Making your catalog more dynamic

Chris Brannon, IT Coordinator, Couer D’Alene Public Library

His slides will be on the wiki

CIN’s catalog

Kyle’s coverflow instructions [back-end setup need in webserver, Apache]

4 coverflow widgets, based on reports for new Adult materials, new childrens materials, recently checked out materials, recently returned materials reports

Hasn’t seen many performance issues with this set up; report doesn’t reload/rerun unless you refresh your page; doesn’t have many people landing on catalog homepage — could be an issue if you have lots of computers that land on the catalog homepage

Dynamic content for the catalog

  • install the coverlow plugin (may need assistance from support vendor)
  • Configure the plugin in the Tool Plugins
  • Place your elements somewhere in the catalog page 
    • <span id='coverlow'>=Loading </span>

Instructions walk you through the necessary steps; to

4 coverflows set up with unique span id and unique report id

will be also sharing the SQL on the reports used to build the coverflows — reports need to be public in order for this to work.

Plugin does the heavy lifting for CoverFlow — javscript code, etc., more, built through plugin, and is added to your opacuserjs sys pref. Can tweak/manipulate the js code then.

One tweak: added canned searches link to the new items cover flows to find more materials.

Some reports are load slower than others.

Suggestions for improvement

  • Reports that are run once a day or on a schedule, and the results stored where Coverflow can utilize those results, resulting in faster loading <– should be be available in a future version of Koha, thanks to Bug #13578
  • Working on applying the results in Digital Displays around the library that can be automatically rotated thru.

Could you pull the data from a list? Write a report that pulls data from a static list

eBooks Vendor pitch & Community Tagging sessions

Dick Kaser, VP Info Today (moderator)

1. Ken Breen, Director, eBook Products, EBSCO Publishing

NetLibrary

eBook in 1997. on CD-ROM. system requirements are a hoot (25Mz processor)!!

124 pg print book explained how to use the ebook.

In July, NetLibrary will be completely under EBSCO.

Purchase plans.

This tweet sums up the presentation. Vendor sales pitch.

2. Leslie Less, VP of Content Development, eBrary

another sales pitch. Walked out after it was over and switched to Community Tagging.

(Overdrive rep was on the panel later; tweets from the session on his time looked interesting)

Overdrive Tweet 1 Overdrive Tweet 2 Overdrive Tweet 3

Community Tagging session.

SOPAC at Darien Library

Tagging Solves an Access Need.

Student Assignment assisted through tagging. Beats searching and gets hundreds of results

Staff Participation. Guide the students (and teachers) to the tag.

“Meet us on main street” book talks on the street. Then staff tag what they talked about so it’s easily findable.

“User Generated Tags” Go from longform handwriting book lists (or initials in books?? — it happens!) to lists and tags in different ways.

Working with users to promote tagging

Kids and tagging:

  • tagging what they want to read and what they have read using this in conjunction with summer reading
  • kids feel empowered by using the tagging and contributing

Inappropriate tagging question: Gretchen hasn’t seen bad tagging ever (and systems that allow tagging, can be moderated).

Bad reviews allowed: Gives patron buy-in; many of the bad reviews are hilarious (especially from kids). [Comment: these do give you feedback on your collection.]

What about adults tagging at Darien? Some users in the community are engaging, especially comments and reviews.

[The tagging session gave me some food for thought to bring back to NEKLS for NExpress as we try to get more use out of the tagging features in our Koha system (OPAC here).]