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The new aadl.org: week 2!

by eli

Thanks to all our patrons for such great feedback about the new catalog since its launch last week. We still have some things missing that we're working on, but a lot of changes have been made and fixes implemented based on your input, so please keep it coming. Here's what we're working on this week:

  • Personal Card Catalog will be back with all your saved cards intact
  • Adding sort by item type to the Checkout History screen
  • Adding reviews and summaries back onto item record pages
  • Fix for various Internet Explorer display issues including hidden copy lists
  • Better support for special characters in the search

...plus whatever you uncover. As a bonus, if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 or 8, you might try out this new aadl search plugin, thanks to one of our patrons!

Thanks again for all your continued patience and feedback as we've made this significant transition. If you're looking for last week's catalog thread, you can find it under About Us :: Library News.

Comments

Submitted by willow on Wed, 08/26/2009 - 1:13pm

Regarding subject searches --

It's great to suggest that I enclose my search term in quotes - but I didn't generate the searches myself, so I didn't type anything at all.

I think the default when you click the hyperlinked subject in one item's catalog entry, should be to have the term enclosed in quotes automatically by the system.

It's preposterous that when one clicks the hyperlinked subject "Education -- Parent participation," the system generates
http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/subject/Education+--+Parent+particip….
which includes books about counseling those diagnosed with terminal illness, and everything else that might have the word "parent" or "participation" in it! Or that when one clicks "Handicrafts--Japan," one gets books about Appalachian banjos.

I thoroughly agree that the LOC subject headings can be confusing. But when one clicks a hyperlink generated by the system, one doesn't expect such irrelevant results.

Hey willow, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my last message in the other thread. This is exactly what we've done, and it was rolled out this morning. The subject headings on an item page now include the quotes when you click on them so that they take you to a list of items that match only that exact, full subject heading. Is it not working this way for you? If you are still seeing links that don't work this way please let us know where you're finding them, we may have missed something. Thanks again for this suggestion!

Hooray!

I checked with a few, my favorite being
http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/subject/%22Mathematics+--+Tables.%22
and ... it worked! No interior decorating books among the results.

I like the new look, by the way, particularly the two columns -- sort of reminds me of when Target decided to make a whole new look for their prescription labels to highlight useful information instead of imitate dot matrix printers.

Thanks for your help and listening to my suggestion! Another example of why I love AADL. :)

Submitted by jmicale on Wed, 08/26/2009 - 9:45pm

Since implementation, I have found that although I logout my session when I'm done, I can close the browser, shut down my computer, restart it the next day, go to the aadl.org site and my account is logged in. I'm very wary of using any kind of public computer to use my account and I am concerned that even on my personal machine this occurs. Pretty serious security issue. This did not happen with the previous site.

I use Firefox 3.5.2.

Thanks.

jmicale, I've change the settings for the cookies to expire on browser close as they used to be. You may need to logout or clear your current cookies, but I tested with the latest safari and firefox 3.5.2 and I was properly logged out and was not automatically reauthenticated in a session. Please let us know if you still experience this as we take this seriously as well.

Submitted by mflick on Wed, 08/26/2009 - 10:41pm

I am impressed with all the work you have done in the past week and how responsive you have been with requests for changes. I assume this means that you are maintaining the website yourself rather than outsourcing it somewhere. Keep up the good work.

Submitted by tcw321 on Thu, 08/27/2009 - 9:39pm

The new website is nice. One comment. The teaching company lectures are checked out in parts. The old website would name the lecture something like The Early Middle Ages Part 1 of 2. The new website just says The Early Middle Ages for the title. There are some clues whether it is Part 1 or 2 but they are subtle. Can we title these lectures the same as before?

Thanks

Submitted by Vivian Sanders on Sat, 08/29/2009 - 8:53pm

As I search for videos using the online catalog, I find that after I put in a request for a video, and then click on "return to the record display" -- it causes my Safari search engine to quit, making it necessary for me to relaunch my Safari. Is this something you can check into on your end? It never used to do this, and I have been requesting videos online for months, so I don't see how it could be a problem with my Safari. Thanks.

Submitted by bfields on Sat, 08/29/2009 - 10:06pm

"Advanced search" used to have a language field, but I don't see it any more.

The closest I can manage is using the call-number search described <a href="http://www.aadl.org/node/1915">here</a&gt;. But that's a little hard to discover (and remember), and not as flexible, since you can't combine the language restriction with e.g. an author or keyword search.

mflick, thanks very much for your comment! The website is developed and maintained by AADL staff, and being able to be responsive to excellent suggestions from a patrons is a big part of the reason why.

tcw321, we're glad you like the upgrades too! We've fixed the early middle ages records, they should show part 1 of 2 on your checkout page. Please let us know if that's still not working the way you'd expect.

Vivian, what version of Safari are you using? We've seen some freezing like you describe with Safari 3. We're not sure why it's happening, but you might try running software update to upgrade to Safari 4 as that will likely resolve the issue.

bfields, you're right that language is missing from the advanced search. We'll add that back. However, there's also an easier way to limit your results in the new catalog; simply search for what you're looking for, then on the results page, click 'by language' under 'Refine your Results' on the right side of the screen, and choose the language you wish to limit your results to. We hope you'll find this feature useful.

Thanks to everybody for all your feedback!

"simply search for what you're looking for, then on the results page, click 'by language' under 'Refine your Results' on the right side of the screen"

Neat-o, I missed that for some reason (maybe I just tune out the sidebars). Thanks!

Submitted by camelsamba on Fri, 09/04/2009 - 9:42pm

More search weirdness (not getting expected results):

I searched for <strong>the care and keeping of you</strong> as a title, it gave me a bazillion hits but not the book I was looking for. So then I put that phrase in quotes and it returned no hits. I used <em>search other libraries</em>, which returned 3 books, including the one with that title which is owned by 133 libraries. I was really surprised that we didn't have it if so many other libraries did, so I searched for the author's name ("Schaefer, Valorie Lee") and found the book. Turns out the title has an & [ampersand] instead of the word "and".

It's disappointing that melcat could match on the phrase but aadl.org couldn't. This search engine really needs major tuning, the idiosyncracies and ensuing results are not at all intuitive.

Another thing: I miss being able to restrict a search by age (e.g. Downtown Youth, All Youth, Teen).

Submitted by maryleen on Tue, 09/08/2009 - 2:59am

Is there a website that will create a firefox search plugin for me? I would like to have an option in the firefox search bar that would search my local public library catalog. I know it's possible for someone to make their own search engine plugins, but I'm not all that confident in my ability to do so. Is there a web site that I could go to where I can input the relevant website and have it more or less automatically create a custom search plugin for me?

Submitted by logista on Tue, 09/15/2009 - 10:08am

Is there some easier way to report image/entry mismatches other than here? The specific instance is <a href="http://www.aadl.org/node/19652">this blog entry</a> that has the right picture, which takes me to <a href="http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1040102">this catalog item</a> that doesn't.

I'd like a way to report this other than by coming to this thread, perhaps a button on the catalog entry?

Submitted by Margaretta on Thu, 07/28/2011 - 1:50pm

cool

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