Jason Clark and Timothy Donahue, librarians from Montana State University, use iGoogle Gadgets to distribute library services outside of the library. They are interested in reaching students “in their own environment.”

Their gadgets are promoted on the MSU library homepage. There are nine gadgets that they have created and posted on their site. These gadgets provide users access to library services like the catalog, databases, and library maps. Their first gadget was a tabbed search box that searches through the catalog, a metasearch, a citation finder, and Google Scholar (proxied). Their second gadget was a flash based floor map. Users mouse over the virtual stacks and they see what call numbers are on that row. They also have a blog aggregator that brings together their blog, Twitter, and Flickr streams.

For the programmers in the audience they showed how to access the source code for each Gadget. It can be found on the Gadget’s home page under the View Source link. This can be useful for establishing a code base on which you can create your own Gadget. Additionally, all of the code that Jason has written is available at http://www.lib.montana.edu/~jason/files.php

Lastly, they showed a way that Google Analytics can be used to track the usage of individual gadgets.  This data could be useful for establishing the “worth” of Gadgets.  It can then be used to convince skeptical librarians that they should direct students to the Gadget.

Internet Librarian 2009, Widgets and Gadgets Hide

I sent out an info video to all of the librarians informing them that we will start SAMi training next week.  Here is a copy of the video:

http://users.library.fullerton.edu/mdemars/videos/buildaguideintro.swf

I am really stoked that this is finally getting underway.  I am hoping that everyone finds the program intuitive and fun to use.  It will also be really interesting to see how people use it.  I have already been surprised by what the testers have been doing.  Next week will be fun.

No tags Hide

Rather than write a lengthy post about the radical changes we have made with SAMi, I thought it would be a better idea to make a screen cast.  So, without further ado:

http://screencast.com/t/Sn1URWRk8wL

You can see that we have really had a sea change in the design of this thing.  Feedback from our testers was the primary reason for this change.  We are hoping that this will really simplify the creation and maintenance of the guides.

Guides, SamI, videos Hide

FindDatabses has been up and running on the site for over three months now, but it was pretty hidden. Users had to be told where it was in order to access it. Call it a “soft opening.” Now it is time of the Grand Opening. As of noonish today, it replaced both the Databases A to Z list, and the Databases by Subject/Metalib interface. So far it has gone well, however, we are noticing some page load time issues on some machines running FireFox.
I think we have the page load issue figured out though. I believe it is the “all tags” file that is slowing it down. The FindDatabases page is actually made up of a bunch of different files. When the user hits the page several files are loading at once. Those files are the A-to-Z list, the subject list, the popular tags list, and the all tags list. IE lets you go about your business as all the seperate files load, while FF makes you wait until all of them are loaded. You won’t notice this wait on most machines, but you will on some of the slower ones.
The All Tags list is growing by leaps and bounds, so it takes a while to compile, so that is what is causing the slowdown. To fix this issue, we will make the All Tags list available on request rather than on load. Meaning that a user will load the file once they click on the All Tags tab. That will also let us track to see how many users are actually accessing that feature.

finddatabases, pollak library website Hide