Project Update, Tips and Features

New Feature in Quicksearch!

The Quicksearch Implementation team has rolled out a new feature in Quicksearch beta: Save Citations to a Bookbag! Now you have the ability to save all of your important items and search results to your own Bookbag. All you need to do is follow the steps below:

  • Sign-in with Yale Central Authentication Service (CAS), via the ‘Login’ button, and do a search.
  • Click into either the Catalogs search results or the Articles search results.
  • Check any of the boxes on the right of each item.
  • Hover over the ‘Selected Items…’ drop down and select ‘Save to Bookbag’.
  • Once the item(s) has been saved, you can access your Bookbag by clicking on the ‘Bookbag’ link in the green saved item box, or the ‘Saved Lists’ link in the upper right corner of the screen.

You can also save to your bookbag directly from a Catalog record:

  • Click on any item in the Catalog results, then click on the ‘Save to Bookbag’ link in the record view.
  • Once the item has been saved to Bookbag, you can access your Bookbag by clicking on the ‘Bookbag’ link in the green saved item box, or the ‘Saved Lists’ link in the upper right corner of the screen.
  • Note: the item-level Save to Bookbag feature works only in the Catalogs search

The Bookbag feature also has an additional feature: the ability to create your own named list. You can achieve this by following the steps below:

  • Go inside your bookbag and select the items you’d wish to save to an alternate list.
  • Once you’ve selected your item(s), click on the ‘Copy Selected Items…’ button and type in a new name for your selected items.
  • Once you hit the ‘Submit’ button, your new list is shown under the ‘Bookbag’ list on the left hand side of the screen.

We hope you enjoy this brand new feature!

– Quicksearch Implementation team

Uncategorized

Quicksearch Beta Feedback

1 Comment

Many thanks to everyone who has provided feedback about the Quicksearch Beta interface!

Our favorite feedback message so far:

“YAY QUICKSEARCH BETA! I just ran my old faithful search, “water nepal” and got some slammin results.”

We’ve also received a lot of great suggestions for changes that would make the interface work better.  For example, two staff members suggested linking to the Orbis record, instead of directly into the Orbis Request feature, so that our patrons can access all of our Scan and Deliver, Aeon, and other request options.

That’s just the sort of feedback we’re looking for!

We have already started work reviewing and making changes like this where we can.  You can see the full list of issues reported and new features requested online on our two sharepoint lists:

Reported Issues: http://tinyurl.com/lit-qs-issues-xslx

Requested Features: http://tinyurl.com/lit-qs-requests-xslx

We hope you will continue exploring Quicksearch Beta (http://search.library.yale.edu) , particularly by using it as part of your daily work.  Please report any comments or suggestions you may have via the ‘Feedback’ links in the header and footer of each Quicksearch page.

Tips and Features

Things to try: custom new items lists and RSS feeds

Did you know that you can get a custom list of new items from Quicksearch? You can have it display on the screen by bookmarking your search after applying some limits and sorting, or you can have the information sent directly to the RSS feed reader of your choice. (Note RSS here is really simple syndication – a way to get updated information to your computer automatically, not Yale’s research storage service.)

 

You can get a list of newly acquired (not necessarily newly published) items that are relevant to you by running a catalog search in Quicksearch. Then apply a limit by Acquisition Date – perhaps “within 1 month.” You can add further limits too – perhaps only by location “Haas Arts Library.” Then choose sort by “Acquired Latest” to see the newest items added to the Quicksearch catalog. You can also adjust how many results display per page (this will also be the number of items sent to the RSS feed).

 

Once you have the search and limits just as you want it, you can bookmark the page or click the orange RSS icon RSS icon (right under “Previous” in the results header) to open the RSS feed in the program of your choice – for many that will be Outlook, though there are other options.

 

One last tip, not Quicksearch specific, is to replace your keyword search with a subject search – or limit by subject or call number – in order to produce more focused results. If subjects align well with your interest, consider removing the keyword search term altogether. For example, my test search of the past month’s acquisitions found 4 items with the keyword “copyright” and the subjects “copyright” or “intellectual property.” When I removed the keyword from the search, leaving only the “Acquisition Date” and “Subject” limits, I found four more on-point results – eight total, four that didn’t have the keyword “copyright” at all (items in non-English languages, for example).

 

Setup for a new items search

[click image to enlarge]

1. To search only by Library of Congress Subject Heading, leave the keyword search blank, or clear it.

2. This will set the maximum number of items in your RSS feed.

3. This sort will show the newest items acquired at the top of the list.

4. “Any of” these subjects will “or” the terms together, making a larger result set.

5. Here is the RSS icon that give you the feed address for this exact search.

6. Acquisition date limits will keep the list smaller.

About Quicksearch

A Quick Guide to Features in Quicksearch beta

1 Comment

There are several new features in Quicksearch that you might want to take a closer look at. These include:

– A search for “resnik justice‘ Quicksearch main page brings up the book by Judith Resnik in the Catalogs search and related articles in the Articles+ search:
Quicksearch beta screenshot

 

– Search criteria “breadcrumbs” appear at the top of your results, making it easier to remember the criteria and facets you’ve used:

Quicksearch beta screenshot

 

– Facets are easily applied and easily removed:

Quicksearch screenshot

 

–Facets can be toggled as inclusive or exclusive (e.g. “Is” this or “Is Not” this):

Quicksearch screenshot

 

– Searches can be converted into RSS:

Quicksearch screenshot

 

This is just a short list… What Quicksearch beta features have you found to be useful or interesting? Let us know via the feedback form!

 

More information and tips on Quicksearch beta features and functionality to come!

Thanks,

The Quicksearch Implementation team

Project Schedule, Uncategorized

Project Schedule Update

Now that Quicksearch is available for review by Library staff, the Quicksearch Implementation team will focus its efforts on three categories of work.

First, we will fix any bugs or other errors reported by staff as part of the review process.  

Second, we will write documentation, both to highlight the new and exciting search features of Quicksearch, and to document the metadata mappings that are currently in use.

Finally, we are planning to develop a long list of new features.  

Most of the new features focus on replicating our existing patron services, but some, like the dynamic display of Item Statuses from Morris, will be brand new, and something we haven’t been able to do in other systems in the past.

Here is our upcoming schedule for the development of these new features:

Fall 2014

  • Add links to online materials directly from the search results list
  • Create a new ‘Resources about Yale” archival resource
  • Login to your account
  • Create bookmarks
  • Export to Endnote and Refworks
  • Expand the list of Summon Facets

Winter 2015

  • Place Orbis Requests in Quicksearch
  • Display Morris Item Statuses in Quicksearch holdings
  • Use the Morris API to do daily record updates

Spring / Early Summer 2015

  • Scan and Deliver Requests
  • Aeon Requests
  • Integrate Findit as a new resource in Quicksearch
  • Borrow Direct / Hathi Trust direct linking
Project Schedule, Project Update

Quicksearch Initial Testing Results

On September 9th, the Quicksearch Implementation team sucessfully hosted our first testing session.

Overall reception of the interface was good!

The primary goal of the testing session was to test searching and faceting in Quicksearch. Participating were 3 Public Services staff, 2 Rare book catalogers, 2 language specialists, 2 staff from Enterprise Systems, and 6 members of the Discovery Metadata group. We asked testers to evaluate the Quicksearch test interface using the Quicksearch Test Script as a guide, in addition to their favorite searches.

Results from our test clearly showed that Keyword searches in Quicksearch work much better than Keyword searches in Orbis. Relevant results are more likely to rise the top of the result list, and results in a result set are more likely to be relevant. This is good news moving forward as we begin now to focus on fine-tuning metadata display issues and on developing Patron Services like Booksmarks, Requesting, etc.

The testing session also revealed a number of bugs, from minor display problems to two major software bugs, for which we sincerely thank the testers! In addition, they requested some interesting new features, like the incorporation of the BMEC (Bass Media Equipment Catalog) in Quicksearch. Their careful testing has been invaluable in helping us identify and prioritize the issues we need to work on next.

After testing, the Discovery Metadata group engaged in an intensive 3-day sprint to go through the 65 responses, categorize them, and make recommendations for the metadata-related issues. (What is a Sprint? A sprint, or scrum, is a concept adapted from the software development world. The team identifies a list of goals, and meets for designated period of time to work on that goal. The team works on that goal and that goal only during the period of the sprint, and meets daily to report on progress and make plans for the next day’s work). The results of the testing and the three-day metadata sprint that followed are summarized in two publicly-available spreadsheets, Reported Issues, and Requested Features.

The Quicksearch Implementation team is currently hard at work resolving issues identified in testing, and doing a full extract and re-load of Orbis and Morris. The Reported Issues and Requested Features spreadsheets will be updated once a week on Friday so you can follow these issues as they are resolved. We expect to continue working on these issues through the remainder of the semester.

Next up: Our goal for this week is to release a Beta version of Quicksearch to all Yale Library Staff for review.

Uncategorized

What is a discovery service?

According to Marshall Breeding, a discovery service is a system that searches “seamlessly across a wide range of local and remote content … [providing] relevance-ranked results.”

Marshall Breeding “Web-Scale Discovery Services“, American Library Association, January 14, 2014

With the arrival of Quicksearch beta, the Library will have two large scale discovery services in its arsenal.

Articles+, powered by ProQuest’s Summon discovery service, allows the user to search through electronic journal articles, images, newspapers, and abstract and index content, as well as our own LibGuides. Articles+ is a production service at Yale, supported by LibraryIT staff and maintained remotely by ProQuest. Along with our eJournal title list and our database A-Z list, the Articles+ discovery service is our patrons’ access point for licensed electronic resource items.

Quicksearch beta is also a large scale discovery service, but has several differences in structure, support and scope in comparison to Articles+. Quicksearch beta is a locally maintained service. It is powered by the open-source Blacklight framework, and is being developed in tandem with our digital collections repository service, findit.library.yale.edu, by LibraryIT staff. Because Quicksearch beta is a an open-source system that the library supports and maintains locally, there is more potential in presenting our data in specific and unique ways. Articles+ uses a central index of over 11.4 billion items, maintained by ProQuest, and it is ProQuest who ultimately decides how that data can be presented.

Like Articles+, the Quicksearch catalog search runs off of a central index; but unlike Articles+ this index lives on a Yale server and contains only Yale catalog records. Quicksearch uses a “bento box” approach to execute simultaneous searches against Morris and Orbis catalog records (the Catalog search) and Articles+ itself, directly from the Quicksearch beta landing page. In this way, a search for a book title might come up with the book in the catalog search, and reviews for that book in the Articles+ search.

Quicksearch beta is just that- a beta product that is still in development. If you’ve never heard the term before, PC Magazine has a useful definition: “A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to try under real conditions.” Quicksearch beta is therefore not a fully developed product like Articles+ is now, but will be eventually!

For more information on discovery services at Yale, particularly Articles+, please see this handout from August’s Rediscover Discovery forums.

About Quicksearch

What’s in Quicksearch? Orbis records

Now that we’ve described what records from Morris, the Yale Law Library’s catalog, are being indexed in Quicksearch, let’s talk about records from Orbis. The main library catalog, Orbis, holds around 12 million bibliographic records. Of these, pretty much every record that is currently live in our online catalog will be indexed into Quicksearch. This includes:

-electronic journal titles from Serials Solutions
-In Process, On Order, and UNCAT records (unsuppressed, of course)
-records from large electronic resources like the Making of Modern Law, Eighteenth Century Collection Online, Making of the Modern Economy, Making of the Modern World, and more
-all other records currently available in the Orbis online catalog

As Scott noted in his post on Morris records in Quicksearch, we are not deduplicating records between catalogs at this time.

Stay tuned for more updates on the Quicksearch project!

About Quicksearch

What’s in Quicksearch? MORRIS records

The Law Library’s catalog, MORRIS, holds just over 900 thousand bibliographic records. When you view the entire Lillian Goldman Law Library location facet in Quicksearch, you’ll see only about 500 thousand records.

When merging the records from two different systems, we had to make some choices about what to send to the joint database that drives Quicksearch. Here’s a summary of what records are included from the Law Library catalog.

We did not send two large categories of records from MORRIS: sets of records we knew were already in Orbis, and temporary records for items on order. For example, MORRIS includes many Project MUSE ebook records. Because these are already in Orbis, we did not send these records from MORRIS. Some large sets of microform materials are excluded because they are duplicated by online materials. Serials Solutions records are also in both systems, but because Law and YUL holdings are synchronized in the Serials Solutions database, including only the YUL records will cover all the Law records.

There are also a few small sets of records for materials that are only available to law students and faculty. These are not currently loaded, but as we work out licensing issues, these sets will be added.

There is not currently any effort to de-duplicate records for titles that are held in both library systems, though this is a possibility for future development.

Project Update

First full load of Orbis and Morris data!

The first full test load of Orbis and Morris data in the new Quicksearch discovery environment is complete!

There are 9.6 million titles from the Orbis Library Catalog and 500 thousand titles from the Morris Law Library Catalog in the test Quicksearch database. That brings the combined catalog total to a whopping 10.1 million titles.

There will be an opportunity in the next few weeks to participate in limited testing of the new combined search, followed by a rollout to Yulib for testing in late September.