Recent Arrivals Application
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
