Maroon Opinions

Where did the call numbers go?

I'd like to comment on what appears to be a new feature in the Library Catalog (not LENS). When search results appear, it is no longer possible to see the call numbers for various items without clicking into the record. This seems to me to be an inefficient change to the catalog, and makes searching for items more difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. This does not seem to be an improvement, but rather somewhat of a step backward, and I hope that this is something that might be considered and changed.

Our apologies -- a few days ago we noticed that (keyword) search results were occasionally dropping their call numbers. Our crack Library IT staff is on the case.

Lens, the Catalog, and ISBNs

Akhil Amar's Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (ISBN 0300073798) appears twice in the catalog: one record for print copies and one record for the e-book.  Much to my consternation, the only version that shows up in Lens is the electronic copy (which I appreciate, but which is not sufficient for my purposes). This had led me to believe that we did not have any (print) copies of the book -- although I later found out that we have five!

Whoops! The record for the print copies got marked "staff-only" by mistake. We've corrected this, and both versions should show up in Lens. Our apologies.

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Alert readers might wonder why the Library employs the staff-only tag, and if searching the catalog would reveal all these books.

We usually mark a book "staff only" when it's been declared lost: we want to suppress it from the catalog to prevent unreasonable expectations that we carry the book, but don't want to completely delete the record. We always harbor a small, faint hope that these books will return home someday.

As for stumbling across a "staff-only" record: searching Lens should never bring up staff-only records. Searching the catalog (HIP) won't display staff-only records either...EXCEPT if you search by either call# or ISBN/ISSN. In those these searches, you'll see all records, even if they've been marked "staff-only."

Fixed-width CSS in Lens

Why is the library's web site using fixed-width columns in its CSS? We need to be able to see the right-hand side, not have to scroll to the right every time we want something. This is a major inconvenience to the majority of uchicago users, since most people are not working on large screens.

The Suggestions Office took this to our colleagues who run the Library's web programs, performing various feats of magic behind the scenes. Alas, their wizardry has limits: fixed-width CSS is a known problem of Lens and unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Lens is a custom UChicago version of Aquabrowser Library (hence those "Powered by Aquabrowser" labels you occasionally see when surfing around in Lens), a product in use at many other libraries.

While we have some ability to customize Aquabrowser, the fixed-width CSS is embedded too deeply into the product -- changing it has to be done by the Aquabrowser developers.

In the meantime, we found 2 workarounds: (1) increase your screen resolution or (2) use the text-only version (http://lens.lib.uchicago.edu/accessible.ashx) -- this would still require some scrolling but doesn't rely as much on fixed-width CSS.

New ways to search for new acquisitions

I have an idea about the way we search library's new acquisition. For example, if now I want to know how many new books in English that the library has purchased in sociology from Jan. 2009 to Apr. 2010, I have to go through every month looking at new books in all languages under the HM. This is quite inconvenient and time-consumed. I hope in the future the web-page of new acquisition may be designed with many options, such as languages, period ranges, subjects, etc. Then by choosing the options, with one click, the user can immediately get what he/she wants to know.

You can also search for new acquisitions in Lens, which may provide some of the functionality you would like.

For example, searching for "sociology" as keyword returns 54,684 titles. However, under the "Refine" options on the right-hand side is "Recently Added" (in the past six months). You may then want to limit by publication date (to, say, last year) because "Recently Added" includes cataloging updates as well as new books.

Additionally, if you use an RSS reader you can save Lens search queries as an RSS feed, and have new items automatically show up in your reader. After you have refined the search the way you want, click the RSS button in the upper-right -- you will get a link that you can copy and paste into your RSS reader.

Vernacular Searching

Would it be possible at some point to allow searching the catalog using non-English scripts? I often search for books written in other scripts, and figuring out how the author's name might be spelled in English, not to mention the spelling of the book's title, can take quite a lot of effort and time.

The short answer is "not really." You can do vernacular searching (e.g.,  looking for "Mao Zedong" using 毛泽东 or 毛澤東) in the  library catalog (HIP) but not in Lens, at least for the present.

The big question, however, is whether you will find anything! There's a decent amount of CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) items with vernacular information. Occasionally we add vernacular for a book in Hebrew or Arabic as well, but that's about it.

While we agree that figuring out the Romanized version of a title or name can be difficult, that's still your best bet for searching purposes. If it helps, our Cataloging and Metadata folks transliterate using the ALA-LC Romanization Tables, as do most other major libraries.

Duplicate authority records

"Bravo, José Antonio" and "Bravo, José Antonio 1937" are one and the same person. Could you please merge the records? Thank you!

Whoops, indeed these books are all by the same writer. Fixed!

Some comments on Lens

This is a suggestion for improvement. There is so many irrelevant results there when I try to search for a book. For example, using title search for "Computed tomography: principles, design, artifacts, and recent advances", only result 1 to 4 is considered relevant. I think the system put the burden to the reader. This is what the system get and the read has to selected among many irrelevant results. I have been avoiding using the library web sites unless I really have to and I know many of my fellow students do the same. Fortunately , the "find it " function integrated well with google scholar.

Thank you for your comments about Lens. We are constantly tweaking the relevancy algorithms and now Computed tomography: principles, design, artifacts and recent advances comes up as #2 in a search for "Computed tomography."

Assessing whether the other 24 results on the page are relevant to one's research is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. The Office staff's backgrounds aren't in math (we stipulate librarians ought to know everything--our lack of omniscience was one reason we were relegated to the Suggestions Office), so it's difficult for us to judge. But we note all titles seem to be concerned with some aspect of computed tomography.

We admit the Library's web site, and the sites of the vendors who create databases such as JSTOR or Web of Science, could be better integrated. Further, neither our site nor theirs approaches the easy simplicity of Google. We welcome specific suggestions for improvement.

Finally, we're glad you enjoy the FindIt integration with Google Scholar. (Readers: if you also would like the FindIt! links to display in Google Scholar, we have instructions on how to set your Google Scholar preferences.)

Recall Notices that say "Recall"

I have heard that you are thinking of changing the phrasing of your recall notices. Might I suggest that you change the subject header of the emails?

Here's why: at the beginning of every quarter, I tend to take have a couple of library email notices warning me that I have books I need to renew. I have a bad habit of putting this off. So I keep getting notices. And I just ignore them, thinking they're about an issue I'm already aware of.

Then I get around to renewing the books, and realize that I've had a recall notice for a while, and I'm in trouble.

I am aware that my behavior is irresponsible here, but I surely cannot be the only absent-minded academic on campus. I've got to think that other people would thank you to explicitly put the word "recall" in the subject.

Our present email notice system is rather kludgy, despite great efforts on the part of Library Systems to drag our circulation system kicking and screaming into the 21st century. (It's due to Systems' great efforts that we have email notices at all.) 

We're hoping, at some future point, to upgrade to a notice system that would allow us a lot more flexibility in notice language and  timing of emails so we can (among other things) give recall notices more prominence.

I miss Spell Check! (Also Library Barcodes)

1.The newly upgraded Word 2007 in Reg is really inconvenient to use. Most importantly, I can't find the word checking/proofing function. In Word 2003 I can see red line under misspelled words, but now nothing shows up. I press F7 to command a check but it says "cannot find proofing tool for English (US)". How can I rely on it to write a paper if it doesn't tell spelling error?? I have asked NSIT about it but it refers me to reference desk, which only says" go check out help document". It doesn't solve the problem in this way.

2. It is inconvenient to report a book that is not on shelf that you have to fill in your 7-Digit Barcode Number. Why not just student ID and email address? In a few times I am no longer interested in reporting a loss seeing the process.

Thank you for your comments. Regarding Word 2007, we are working on installing the Office Proofing Tools so that spell-check will work again. It may take us a little while, however.

On our "not on shelf" form and many other Library forms, we ask for your library barcode as way of uniquely identifying you. Many patrons have the same or similar names, thus we need the barcode.

We do use CNetIDs for identification when possible, but many Library patrons don't have a student ID or CNetID, including (for example) older alumni, visiting researchers, Northwestern students and faculty, or students from the Hyde Park seminaries. So if these patrons need to use a particular form, like the "not on shelf" form, we prefer to identify patrons via library barcode.

Emailing Results in Lens

It would be great if there were a link to email yourself search results in Lens.

Thank you for the suggestion -- we've passed it along to our Lens developers.

As an alternative, you can export selected items to RefWorks, or (using Lens's "Save or tag" feature), create a list of items within Lens. These solutions may not be ideal, but we thought them worth mentioning.