[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen for Academics -- PAC Flavor

[Donald Butterworth]

Kathy and All,

I have been pondering for a couple days how I would spec out an Academic
PAC Flavor. I was going to try to write out my thoughts but decided it
would be easier to understand if I just drew them. So please find attached
a starting point for what seems to me like a more academically oriented
bibliographic record display.

Here are some principles keep in mind:

   - Never make a user click twice if there is a way to click once
   - Must be compatible with all manner of handheld devices
   - Must comply with current accessibility standards for the sight
   impaired
   - Must comply with current library standards (no matter how ridiculous)
   - In my opinion there should be: less art, more text, less white space,
   fewer headings

Note that the author and subject entries are hot links. Clicked authors
would result in an Author Browse Results Screen. Clicked Subjects would
result in a Subject Browse Results Screen.

I believe it is critical to treat the whole subject phrase as a single
entity. Treating each individual subdivision as its own searchable entity
is not helpful. Probably 10% of the records in our collection have the
subject subdivisions "Religious aspects -- Christianity." You can imagine
that the results from a keyword search for either of these terms would be
unhelpful. On the other hand clicking on the entire phrase, such as
Psychotherapy -- Religious aspects -- Christianity, and being placed on a
results screen for that entire phrase would lead the researcher to subject
areas they may not have been aware of.

That's it for me, for now. Please understand that these are my personal
meanderings and should not be considered anything officially endorsed by my
employer.

Happy Friday,

Don

--- Kathy Lussier wrote ---

PAC: Academic flavor.
It might be nice to offer a different look to the PAC that defaults to a
fuller bibliographic description.

This idea is something that I think would be fairly easy to implement by
anyone who can customize the OPAC. You could create an academic_template
directory, add the customized tt2 file there, and then contribute those
changes to the community along with some documentation telling people how
to point to this directory in eg.conf if they want to use an academic
flavor.

We have sites that do use a fuller bibliographic description than the
default, but I think they do so because they find it to be useful for all
of their libraries, not just their academics. Are there other things you
(or other academics out there) would like to see in the academic flavor of
the catalog?

Kathy


-- 
Don Butterworth
Faculty Associate / Librarian III
B.L. Fisher Library
Asbury Theological Seminary
don.butterworth at asburyseminary.edu
(859) 858-2227
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