[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] mobile OPAC functionality in 2.0
Kathy Lussier
klussier at masslnc.org
Mon Jan 24 12:59:18 EST 2011
Thank you Lisa for taking the time to let us know how things are going with
the KCLS catalog and to Mike for giving us some background on the decision
to turn off faceting. I know I've found this information to be very helpful.
Kathy
-------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 756-0172
(508) 755-3721 (fax)
klussier at masslnc.org
IM: kmlussier (AOL & Yahoo)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org]
> On Behalf Of Lisa Hill
> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 2:50 PM
> To: open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
> Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] mobile OPAC functionality in 2.0
>
>
>
> Hi All-
>
> I feel like I am coming really late to the party.
>
> My name is Lisa Hill and I am in charge of the KCLS catalog.
> I oversee the OPAC the mobile Pac and the UI of Self
> Checkout- self check out overall falls under our Circ Supervisor.
>
>
>
> I apologize for not chiming in sooner- I am sure all of you
> know that when you migrate there are not enough hours in the
> day to get your work done for that first year after you go live.
>
> My department alone has answered about 7,000 emails so far
> from patrons and staff alike since the OPAC went live on
> 09/24/10. That does not include any telephone help or the
> fantastic service the folks in the branches have given to our patrons.
>
>
>
> Matt and I will send out a more detailed email about where we
> think the OPAC might be going- but I wanted to give you my
> input regarding our OPAC and Mobile Catalog in its current
> form- you know straight from the horse's mouth.
>
>
>
> Mobile PAC
>
> This has been one of the most gratifying parts of the project.
>
> When we were testing Evergreen in the early summer and spring
> we noted that it was slower than our previous system(Innovative).
>
> It was then that we decided to devote serious time into the
> Mobile Catalog. The folks at Sitka did the programing
> piece(abandoning unAPI and rewriting the whole thing using
> the jquery library and not the dojo library that the full
> OPAC uses) Also, with our old Mobile catalog on III patrons
> were able to access their account. As you all know that was
> not a possibility with the Evergreen Mobile. It was
> important to my department to take away very few features
> from our public. We knew that it would happen given our
> aggressive timeline- but I worked really hard to lessen the
> burden on the public.
>
>
>
> Through the hard work of Steven and Ben at Sitka the mobile
> not only ensured that our patrons did not lose functionality
> but they also gained it- our patrons could now suspend and
> activate holds through the mobile catalog, which they could
> not do before. KCLS did the UI and have worked hard to
> develop new skins in conjunction with our front end vendor
> FGI. I have attached the new skins for the mobile. On
> Tuesday we began promoting the mobile catalog as an
> alternative to the full OPAC- many of our DSL patrons can not
> log into the full OPAC- and the hits have gone up 200% since
> Tuesday. Folks really like how fast it is.
>
>
>
>
>
> OPAC
>
> Everyone's experience is going to be different- the great
> thing about being a librarian is that your job is different
> depending on the community you serve. So please test your
> catalog with your own users- but I truly hope that our hard
> work helps you in some way.
>
> We turned off faceting- initially because it was affecting
> speed but also because we did not collapse the filters
> properly (catalogers please don't hate me- but most of our
> patrons don't understand what a corporate author is). We
> cannot wait to bring it back since so many of our patrons
> liked it in our usability studies. However, since patrons did
> not have this in III we have not made this a priority because
> there are still features they had in the old catalog that
> they still do not have in Evergreen.
>
>
>
> Things that we turned on that got the biggest bang for our
> buck- the remember me feature and the checkout history. I am
> not sure if your patrons would like these features as much as
> ours did- we had both these features with III since we went
> live with this in 2004. That being said- every web site has
> this feature- from Amazon to Bank of America- so our users
> expect these services- and when we brought them back on
> 11/19 we received less "fan mail."
>
>
>
> The biggest complaints currently center around speed and
> search results- we are working on improving these(more on
> that later). The third largest complaint is that our
> ecommerce module is not up yet. We were the second library
> west of the Mississippi to bring up ecommerce in 2005- and
> they miss it. Our staff miss it- ecommerce was handling
> about 26% of our total fines and fees a month. While the
> existing module is not perfect I have been working really
> hard to ensure the error messages it gives to patrons are
> understandable and that it does not place erroneous charges
> on cards.
>
>
>
> I hope this email helps- I truly believe in the Evergreen
> community- I enjoy working with ESI and FGI- and I know that
> choosing open source was a good choice. I just wish someone
> could invent more hours in the day.
>
> Please feel free to email me if you have any OPAC specific
> questions- lhill at kcls.org and I will try to get back to you.
>
>
>
> I am working on moving our templates to a public repository-
> and when that happens I will send something out to the list.
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Lisa
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org]
> On Behalf Of Lori Bowen Ayre
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 11:41 AM
> To: Evergreen Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] mobile OPAC functionality in 2.0
>
>
>
> Thanks for the feedback, Kathy. I'll work on getting more
> info on the issues that KCLS has run into so that people have
> a better idea of where the problem spots were for them and
> when it was an Evergreen issue, skin issue, or something else.
>
>
>
> Lori
>
> On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Kathy Lussier
> <klussier at masslnc.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Lori,
>
> I think it would be useful to see the KCLS skin in a public
> repository, but it would also be helpful to know where the
> trouble spots have been with the skin and with the new
> functionality. For example, we noticed that faceting was
> turned off soon after KCLS went live. Is it a problem with
> the way faceting works with the KCLS skin or is it a general
> problem with faceting that will continue to appear when sites
> start using the default skin in 2.0?
> It would help us understand which pieces of the KCLS OPAC we
> may want to adapt for our own use and which pieces we may
> want to avoid.
>
> Kathy
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Kathy Lussier
> Project Coordinator
> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
> (508) 756-0172
> (508) 755-3721 (fax)
> klussier at masslnc.org
> IM: kmlussier (AOL & Yahoo)
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
>
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
> > [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org]
> > On Behalf Of Lori Bowen Ayre
> > Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 10:42 AM
> > To: Evergreen Discussion Group
> > Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] mobile OPAC functionality in 2.0
> >
> > Thanks, Dan. To be honest, I'm not clear what is involved in the
> > "skin" or the "skinning" process and it appears my guess
> was wrong.
> > At any rate, I'm happy to pursue publication of the skin that was
> > developed if people think that would be useful as is.
> >
> > I'll let you know what I find out.
> >
> > Lori
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 1:35 AM, Dan Scott
> <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 04:03:23PM -0800, Lori Bowen
> Ayre wrote:
> > > Hi Tara,
> > >
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > > So. After many attempts at fixes and tweaks, the KCLS and
> > Equinox folks are
> > > looking are completely rewriting the Evergreen OPAC.
> >
> >
> > Note that it's not just the KCLS and Equinox folks, although
> > they might
> > have a contractual relationship. As a project we
> probably should
> > have
> > started this effort some time ago - we kicked the
> idea around a
> > number
> > of times - however, there were many other fish to fry and not
> > many
> > friers, and the current OPAC works well enough for most of us
> > (even with
> > the performance concerns) that it didn't became a high enough
> > priority
> > (outside of experimental efforts like the plain-HTML social
> > interface).
> >
> >
> > > This is ultimately
> > > really good news because all that great new
> functionality will
> > then be part
> > > of Evergreen (no "skinning" required).
> >
> >
> > Well, "skinning" will always be required, unless
> libraries want
> > to live
> > with the default Evergreen logo and text and colours and
> > layout...
> > Unless by "skinning" you mean something like
> "stripping all of
> > the
> > site-specific information from the surface of an interface",
> > which is
> > the opposite of what the term normally means but
> actually might
> > be
> > appropriate in the KCLS case.
> >
> > I'd still like to see the KCLS skin get published in a
> > repository
> > somewhere, as (unless the skin itself is exacerbating the
> > performance
> > problems at KCLS) the design elements that many oohed
> and aahed
> > over
> > so many months ago could still be a nice contribution to the
> > project.
> >
> >
> > > The bad news is that might take a while.
> >
> >
> > If we tackle it as a high priority, rapid iteration
> effort, then
> > we
> > should be able to knock out large blocks of functionality
> > relatively
> > quickly. If pages and pages of formal specs need to
> be written
> > first,
> > signed off on, etc, before any code gets written,
> then that will
> > take a lot longer.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> > Lori Bowen Ayre // Library Technology Consultant The Galecia
>
> > Group // www.galecia.com <http://www.galecia.com/>
>
> > (707) 763-6869 // Lori.Ayre at galecia.com
> >
>
> > <mailto:Lori.Ayre at galecia.com> Specializing in open source
>
> > ILS solutions, RFID, filtering, workflow optimization, and
> materials
> > handling
> >
> > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
> Lori Bowen Ayre // Library Technology Consultant
>
> The Galecia Group // www.galecia.com <http://www.galecia.com/>
>
> (707) 763-6869 // Lori.Ayre at galecia.com
>
>
>
> Specializing in open source ILS solutions, RFID, filtering,
>
> workflow optimization, and materials handling
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>
>
>
>
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