TIS Lab

Recent Arrivals

We’ve launched our Recent Arrivals app, which features any item that’s been added to the catalog in the past 30 days along with any item that is on a designated new book shelf in a branch library.

Users have the option to filter these results by branch location, material type, and language. Results can be sorted by title or date added to the catalog. Any search combination, which can be defined as narrowly as Italian DVDs at the Fine Arts Library, can be saved as an RSS feed.

We intend this to be a new discovery tool which aids in browsing our enormous collection. The Millennium Catalog excels at searching for known authors, titles, or keywords. This is geared toward the student or faculty member who is interested in seeing new acquisitions in a particular branch or language.

Several of the branch libraries have been keeping manual lists of new materials on their sites. The new application can be incorporated into any branch site so that it only shows new materials for a single location. An example of a branch library already taking advantage of this can be found at the recently-redesigned Fine Arts Library. We hope we can incorporate the new app into other branch pages and free up our busy staff for other duties.

Some of the morphing the project took over the its course:

• Initially it was going to be only for new books but we identified the need to represent all materials
• Choosing an application name proved difficult (New Items? New Books & More?) and Recent Arrivals was decided by a bibliographer vote
• We identified early on the importance of showing an item’s availability status in our results, rather than requiring users to click through to the catalog to see if it could be checked out. We were able to accomplish this via MAJAX an AJAX module for the Millennium catalog.

One randomly-selected recent arrival is currently being highlighted in a homepage feature each time the page loads.

Homepage Feature

In the past, the UT Libraries have had a variety of independent pages that list subject-related information. These pages include databases by subject, subject guides, subject specialists, and so on. TIS identified several issues with that approach:

• Subject names were not consistent. One page might list a subject called Children’s Studies, while another might call it Youth Studies.
• Subject pages were not integrated. If a user was browsing databases by subject, there was no easy way to view that subject’s bibliographer.
• Maintenance was difficult. If a specialist changer his/her office, that information needed to be updated in several places.

Our solution was to create a single database of subjects that contains all of the relevant information in one location. This database can be updated using a password-protected web interface. Now, if we decide to change “Theater” to “Theatre”, we make that update in one location and the change is reflected throughout our site.

Below is a list of pages that are currently using the new subjects database:

• Research by Subject – In the past, this page simply linked to research guides. Now, it links to guides, databases, and specialist information.
• Subject Detail pages – In addition to listing the information from the Research by Subject page, this page also provides links to related subjects.
• Specialist Profile pages – This page serves as a profile page for subject specialists. The contact information is pulled from the campus directory, which prevents us from having to maintain that information. It also lists interests, publications, personal sites, degrees, and more.
• Databases by Subject – Previously, this page only listed databases for each subject. Now, it lists recommended databases and provides links to that subject’s detail page and the specialist profile page.

We plan on using the data from new database on several other pages in the future. For example, we will integrate it with our existing library2blackboard application and an upcoming mobile version of our site. The work invested in this project will hopefully pay dividends long into the future.

The following post was contributed by our Outreach Librarian, Meghan Sitar…

The University of Texas Libraries have maintained a presence in Facebook for several years now, starting as a Group before transitioning to one of the newer Fan Pages.  We’ve used this space to post content from our other social media sites, including blog posts from our New for Undergraduates blog, video tutorials posted on YouTube, and event photos published on Flickr.

With the redesign of Fan Pages and the ability to publish our content to our fans’ News Feeds, it seemed like a good time to reexamine how we were managing all of this and to look for methods of automating the interaction between all of these different sites.  At the same time, we had been hearing from students who wanted to see us on Twitter, which seems to have finally gained some popularity among students on campus.

Matt Lisle, our intrepid Instructional Designer, had the brilliant idea to link Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and our Wordpress blogs together using FriendFeed.

This is where things get a little complicated.

When one of these sites posts to FriendFeed, the post is then exported to Twitter.

Using a Facebook application called Twitter Fan Page Sync, we’ve linked together our Twitter account and our Facebook Fan Page.  Twitter then posts the same information it receives from the Friend Feed to the status on our Facebook Fan Page.

Perhaps an illustration is in order?

(Click the image to see the full version)

The benefit of this system is that the cross-posting between all of these outlets is automated and no one person is responsible for repurposing the content.  The time investment in posting to any one of these sites returns a greater yield since the visibility of that post is at least doubled.

We’ve seen some problems with the stability of the Facebook application.  While the FriendFeed postings are readily feeding to Twitter and then to Facebook, direct posts to Twitter only showed up in Facebook onces we installed a second Facebook application, Selective Twitter Status, which requires tweets to include a #fb at the end.

That small nuisance aside, we’re pleased to have found a way to consolidate our social media empire into one relatively simple system.

• UT Libraries on Facebook
• UT Libraries on Twitter
• UT Libraries on Friendfeed

A few months ago, we announced that the University of Texas Libraries created an application that would integrate subject-specific library information into Blackboard courses. Finally, we’ve gotten around to sharing our code.

• First, read our previous post that explains how to use template variables in Blackboard
• Then, go to http://code.google.com/p/library2blackboard/ to obtain a php script, 2 sample xml files, and an html file for testing.

For the past several weeks we’ve been hard at work on a new project that will dynamically insert course-specific library information into each UT Blackboard course.

Students will access this new feature by clicking a “Research Tools” link in the menu bar, which is automatically added to all Blackboard courses at UT (see screenshot below). This new section will provide contact information for the subject bibliographer responsible for the course, a link to the subject guide for the course, search tools, and more research assistance.

The secret to doing this was to use Blackboard’s template variables. They enable you to create a URL that can pass information such as username, course prefix, course number, etc. In our case, we created a link that looked like this: http://www.ourlink.com/file.php?course=@X@course.course_id@X@ … which passed the course ID as a variable to our PHP script. We were then able to look up the course-specific information from our XML file. Click the thumbnail below to view a diagram that details the process:

The end result is a course-specific tool that students can use while conducting research in their courses. It also enables the library to make more students and faculty aware of the services that are available to them. Click here to view screenshots of the final product.

LibX is a useful tool that was created by the Virginia Tech Libraries. It enables other libraries to create a Firefox add-on that includes features such as:

• Search toolbar
• Right-click menus
• Embedded cues
• Autolinking
• …and more

Below is a quick screencast of the search toolbar in action…

You can install the UT Libraries’ LibX add-on here, or build your own.

TIS added some new features (chat, more search options) to the UT Libraries’ iGoogle gadget. Click here to add it to your iGoogle page.

If you are interested in creating your own iGoogle gadget:

1. Take a look at our source code, then…
2. Read a bit about the API, then…
3. Watch this helpful presentation, given by Ed Metz from USACGSC, that details the process of creating an iGoogle gadget.

A few weeks ago we launched an updated version of our Facebook app for UT Libraries. The application includes search tools, instant messaging, video tutorials, our “How Do I” wiki, and library news.

We followed the instructions written by Gath Adams to create the app. Our hope is to expand on our work and include some more community building features, similar to the Facebook app created by the University of Michigan.