What's in the Library Catalog?

The WebVoyáge Advisory Committee is looking for volunteers to come up with an articulate and concise answer to the question "What's in the Library Catalog?" for inclusion in a help page of the redesigned WebVoyáge. It can be narrative, a list, whatever. Get started by taking a look at our current definition. Any and all entries are welcome. Remember, pithy is good.

Initial presentation to staff

The WebVoyáge Advisory Committee gave a presentation to Library staff on January 10, 2007. We briefly outlined how the online catalog fits in with the ILS software and discussed some of the changes that are envisioned for the new catalog interface. The PowerPoint may not make too much sense without the accompanying narrative, so if you missed the meeting and have questions, please ask.

A simple, simple search

A cornerstone of the redesign will be a truly simple, simple search. One search box, one button, nothing else. A single search box is only feasible if the search "behaves" intuitively, and this one does: words within quote marks are searched as a phrase, words outside of quote marks are automatically boolean ANDed, and the search is executed as a keyword anywhere search, with relevance ranking [1]. If that sounds Google-like, it was meant to be.

Why haven't we seen similar simple search interfaces for WebVoyáge? The search logic is made possible via an enhancement to Voyager 6.1 and thus is available to all customers, but the stripped down interface requires the use of a wrapper script and that takes some programming.

To judge for yourself whether this is an improvement, compare it to our current "simple in name only" search.

[1] Per the GKEY^* definition in the Sysadmin module and WebVoyáge config files. Note that the relevance ranking algorithm is far from ideal.

Catalog redesign: "The Plan"

In a nutshell, The Plan is to make finding information using WebVoyáge easy and intuitive. How are we going to accomplish that? By paying attention to widely accepted (and tested) usability principles. By understanding how to emphasize and leverage the strengths of the Voyager product, as well as how to minimize and work-around the weaknesses.

We will be posting info on anticipated changes and we welcome comments, particularly from UT Arlington Library staff. In addition to this blog, the WebVoyáge Advisory Committee will be scheduling presentations for Library staff.