TAG | Guides
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.
I am not going to offer excuses, nor dwell on the fact that I have not even looked at this blog in two months. I am here again and that is all that matters. Right?
Mike and I worked on a new widget idea yesterday afternoon. I had the idea of making a widget that will search full-text documents from Google Books. I did a search on Global Warming and found a lot of full-text government publications. I picked one (see below) and I pulled the jacket jpeg and a brief description. I then went to the document search page and pulled the code for the search box. Mike dissected the form and pulled out the extraneous bits and then pasted it in with the text and image. We then added it to the the content management system which generated a script tag for it which can then be pasted wherever.
I really like this idea. I think that it can be useful for class-specific guides. It is easy enough to duplicate now that the original code has been written. All that needs to be done is to change the book id number (the one bellow is ESYVRSY074MC). Everything else in the code remains the same. In fact, we could probably write something that would act as a books widget generator. Add in the title, it fetches the book id from Google and spits it in to the code, click go and it automatically generates a widget and gives you a script code. Just have to build it first…..
This pocket-sized reference on key environmental
data for over 200 countries includes key indicators on agriculture, forestry, biodiversity,
energy, emission and pollution, and water and sanitation. The volume helps establish
a sound base of information to help set priorities and measure progress toward environmental
sustainability goals. This year’s Focus is on the damage from climate change and
carbon dioxide emissions
Search in this book
So far the guides project has been going well. I have so far redesigned three guides all with the same “portal” principle in mind. The new guides are for Geography, Health Science, and Kinesiology. You can preform searches from all three guides from the search widgets that are based on Xerxes. We added additional functionality to these widgets so that now the user can get information on the databases they are searching by clicking an “i” icon.
Mike Blylevin and I collaborated on the creation of a new Journal Search widget that adds a tremendous amount of functionality. The new interface allows the user to search for journals and journal articles in a number of ways, such as by title, author, article title, and year. The results of the search appear in the iframe.
The new guide format was pitched to some of the higher-ups in the library and was very well received. I told them that I am going to go ahead with the project and see where it leads. I said that I am looking at these guides as a place to experiment with new web technologies that might have a broader application outside the context of the guides.
The topic of information literacy came up in the meeting. There were some concerns that if I was showing students how to use the guide instead of the site as a whole that the students would be underserved. I tried to allay these concerns by showing them that there are links out to the broader page all over the guides. I also instruct the students that there are many ways to access the information and that the guide is just one of them. Hopefully that made some sense to those that are leery of this concept.
