Posts Tagged ‘library’

No Portal

Posted on September 7th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

No Portal!

Now that the Library website is live, we need to start referring all students and staff to the new website and not to the University Portal for information about the Library’s services. We need to all-but-remove the word Portal from our vocabulary when we’re talking to students*.

*N.B. I’m only talking about the Library here. Other parts of the University still use the Portal as a vehicle to communicate with students – and even more so with staff, although the whole Portal (University-wide) is due to be replaced with an updated SharePoint system by 2014.

Most Library content on the Portal is now available in some form on the new website. Library Portal content has been replaced by messages redirecting users to the new site. Library Portal sites have been hidden from the main Portal navigation (but permissions have been left in place, so that links from other sites to our Library Portal pages go somewhere meaningful.

  • A small number of Library Portal sites still need to be moved across to the new site (or ditched entirely and not replaced): we’re working through these.
    1. Copyright
    2. Help guides
    3. Regulations
    4. Repository Steering Group
    5. Services for students with disabilities
    6. SPSS licence codes
    7. Using other libraries
  • The Databases site on the Portal (which until now we’ve referred to as the “e-Library”) is a special case – this will stay in place for a while longer, until we can replicate it using (probably) LibGuides.
  • We’ll also continue to use the Portal for our Library Staff Pages (i.e. as a staff intranet and store for staff documentation). We hope to move this content to the ‘new’ SharePoint/Portal in 2014-
  • I’ve updated all the links to the Library from the Portal home page (https://portal.lincoln.ac.uk/), so that they point to our new site. Similarly, links on the University’s corporate website (http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/campuslife/libraryservices/) have been updated.
  • Links to our services on the front page of the library catalogue (HiP)—which are stored in an XML/RSS file—have been updated so that they match (…ish) the top-level navigation options of the new website.
  • We still need to look at our presence on Blackboard. We’ll continue to use Blackboard to offer specific, teaching-and-learning-focused services to students and staff.
  • All of these changes (and the recent introduction of EZproxy) means we need new, updated guidance on authentication for our users – we’re working on a LibGuide specifically to address authentication problems.

New Library website is live!

Posted on August 24th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

Our new Library website is now finally live at: http://library.lincoln.ac.uk/

Screenshot of the new Library website - home page

(Or www.library.lincoln.ac.uk works just as well.)

This is the Library’s new ‘home’ on the web, and the place where we’ll link to all of our other new services. From now on, we’ll start referring all students and staff to the new website and not to the Portal for information about the Library. Information on the Portal will be gradually phased out of existence. Initially we’ll replace the content on the Portal with links to the new website, before eventually removing the Portal sites entirely. The whole Portal (University-wide) is due to be replaced by c.2014.

We’ll continue to use Blackboard to offer specific, teaching-and-learning-focused Library services to students and staff.

Because of this change, our library catalogue has been relegated to a new web address: http://catalogue.library.lincoln.ac.uk/ – automatic redirects are in place for existing links to catalogue records from Blackboard, etc. There’s also a prominent image displaying a link to the catalogue, on the new website home page.

The new site runs on the University of Lincoln’s WordPress ‘blogging’ platform, which is useful for far more than just blogging. Many thanks to all the people in the Library and ICT services who have worked so hard in putting the new site together, in particular: Adele Beeken, Andrew Beeken, Alex Bilbie, Debbie Clarvis, and Simon Tompkins.

We intend that this site will be subject to constant development and improvement, and we need to hear all of your comments about the design and/or content – please use the feedback form in the bottom-right of the new website.

Update on the new Library website

Posted on June 29th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

A group of Library and ICT staff met today to review the progress of the new Library website and to decide what needs to be done next.

The site structure has developed quite a bit over the past few weeks: here is the current version (1.4):

Library web page plan version 1.4

We now have a custom WordPress theme for the site (a fork of the Common Web Design version 3.0 3.1 –whoops!), and we’re starting to populate the test site (available to view at library.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk) with real content. Here’s a screenshot of the home page as of 29 June 2012:

Screenshot of the new Library website in development

We also have a plan to sort out our subdomain names (see here); we’re hoping to make changes in July to the catalogue DNS, allowing us to start to promote the new site as our primary presence on the web. We’re meeting again in a couple of weeks to discuss how we’re going to approach the problem of keeping our website content fresh and up to date, involving (I think) a lot of user testing and putting ‘review by’ dates on all content.

Technology in the Library’s annual review 2011

Posted on November 23rd, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

The Library has published its 2011 Annual Review, including short reports on the following techie items:

You can read the annual review here.

The Library: Annual Review 2011

HELS bells!

Posted on October 27th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

We have a new structure in ‘my bit’ of the Library, and I’ve got a new boss. Dave Masterson has taken up the brand-new post of Head of Electronic Library Services (HELS), with responsibility over all technical, electronic, systems, and acquisitions/cataloguing services in the Library.

Diagram of the new Library structure

(Diagram of the new Library structure. The new HELS is in blue. My [very small] team and I are in yellow. N.B. that the new HELS post also has dotted-line responsibility for the work of the Academic Subject Librarian for computer science/engineering subjects.)

Congratulations, Dave!

Blogs in the Library

Posted on September 14th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

There seems to have been a spate of my colleagues in the Library creating new, personal/individual blogs on my.blogs.lincoln:

  • Judith@theLibrary, Judith Elkin, Academic Subject Librarian, created 7 September, 2011
  • Sport Librarian, Oonagh Monaghan, Academic Subject Librarian, created 6 September, 2011
  • Meandering into the future, Chris Leach, Systems Librarian, created 6 September, 2011
  • Business Librarian, Daren Mansfield, Academic Subject Librarian, created 17 August, 2011
  • Faye@the Library, Faye Cleminson, Academic Subject Librarian, created 10 August, 2011
  • Thought Cloud, Elif Varol, Library (E-resources) Assistant, created 21 May, 2011
  • (er… Paul Stainthorp, Paul Stainthorp, Electronic Resources Librarian, created 22 July, 2010)

Which is nice. They’re all mostly empty at the moment. But I hope people will get into the habit of blogging regularly. Our initial experiments in library blogging were based around the idea of writing for shared, multi-author, institutional news-type blogs (Library news blog, The Winch!, L&LR staff blog). But I’m not convinced that way of working has stood the test of time. Blogging seems to make much more sense when it’s done by a named (or at least pseudonymed) individual, writing in their own voice and from their own perspective about their own work. Posts could then always then be aggregated/digested into a secondary library-wide blog for ease of following.

I’ve aggregated all the individual library staff blogs into this OPML file, in case you’re desperate enough to want to follow us all. You should be able to import it into a feed reader (e.g. Google Reader).

Because a couple of|the new blogs are using the standard photo of the GCW at night as their banner image in the CWD WordPress theme, I might pick out a different library-themed photo from my flickr photostream to use on paulstainthorp.com. Don’t be surprised if it changes soon.

Subdomain dot something dot blah dot uk

Posted on July 28th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

The University of Lincoln has… rather a lot of web subdomains. Some might say too many. Our JISC funded Linking You project touched on this problem (assuming it is a problem), and then slowly—and wisely—backed away.

All of the following can by found using a Google domain search – each of these can be suffixed by “lincoln.ac.uk” to form a real domain name:

Disclaimer: I’ve no idea how many of these are current, official, or meaningful. However, here’s a humble proposal: if you want a new subdomain under *.lincoln.ac.uk, you have to have it tattooed on your arm first.

  1. alumni.lincoln.ac.uk
  2. auth.lincoln.ac.uk
  3. awww02.lincoln.ac.uk
  4. awww05.lincoln.ac.uk
  5. blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk
  6. blogs.lincoln.ac.uk (and any number of blog sub-subdomains)
  7. commons.lincoln.ac.uk
  8. cross.lincoln.ac.uk
  9. cswww02.lincoln.ac.uk
  10. dev-www.lincoln.ac.uk
  11. dcapi.lincoln.ac.uk
  12. data.lincoln.ac.uk
  13. diverse.lincoln.ac.uk
  14. ecards.lincoln.ac.uk
  15. email.lincoln.ac.uk
  16. enterprise.lincoln.ac.uk
  17. eprints.lincoln.ac.uk
  18. filmpolicy.lincoln.ac.uk
  19. forensicchemistry.lincoln.ac.uk
  20. gateway.lincoln.ac.uk
  21. gophers.lincoln.ac.uk
  22. graphicdesign.lincoln.ac.uk
  23. helene.lincoln.ac.uk
  24. hemswell.lincoln.ac.uk
  25. learninglab.lincoln.ac.uk
  26. learninglandscapes.lincoln.ac.uk
  27. lisc.lincoln.ac.uk
  28. lncd.lincoln.ac.uk
  29. lost.lincoln.ac.uk
  30. m.lincoln.ac.uk
  31. mccplacement.lincoln.ac.uk
  32. mchome.lincoln.ac.uk
  33. my.lincoln.ac.uk
  34. neo.lincoln.ac.uk
  35. ojs.lincoln.ac.uk
  36. online.lincoln.ac.uk (and several sub-subdomains including cwd.online.lincoln.ac.ukopenatrium.online.lincoln.ac.uk, and nucleus.online.lincoln.ac.uk)
  37. orth.lincoln.ac.uk
  38. owps.lincoln.ac.uk
  39. pay.lincoln.ac.uk
  40. pebblepad.lincoln.ac.uk
  41. phone.lincoln.ac.uk
  42. portal.lincoln.ac.uk
  43. portfolios.lincoln.ac.uk
  44. posters.lincoln.ac.uk
  45. print.lincoln.ac.uk
  46. reviewdb.lincoln.ac.uk
  47. robots.lincoln.ac.uk
  48. shop.lincoln.ac.uk
  49. student.dc.lincoln.ac.uk
  50. studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk
  51. support.lincoln.ac.uk
  52. thesocialapp.internal.lincoln.ac.uk
  53. tvhistory.lincoln.ac.uk
  54. visit.lincoln.ac.uk
  55. webpages.lincoln.ac.uk
  56. wwh.lincoln.ac.uk
  57. www.lincoln.ac.uk (our main corporate website)
  58. www.15×15.lincoln.ac.uk
  59. www.frontier.lincoln.ac.uk
  60. www.ix3.lincoln.ac.uk
  61. www.lsj.lincoln.ac.uk
  62. www.tsvc.lincoln.ac.uk

And I’ve not even got started on our own dirt – the University Library’s own little handful of subdomains.

Firstly, what the Library hasn’t got. There’s nothing to see at:

  • library.lincoln.ac.uk

(i.e. we’ve nothing at the ‘root’ Library subdomain. A couple of people have spotted this slight illogicality.)

Now what we have got, or have had in the recent past:

…this points at our SirsiDynix HiP 3.08 library catalogue. Really, if anything, this ought to represent the overall web presence of the Library, with HiP relegated to something like catalogue.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…the Jerome project.

  • blogs.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…which is defunct and redirects to the main blogs site.

  • eprints.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…a moribund, older installation of our EPrints Repository used for the 2008 RAE.

Anonymised library activity data for the academic years 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10: collected for the JISC Library Impact Data Project

Posted on June 13th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

These data consist of entries for 4,268 anonymised students who graduated from the University of Lincoln with a named award at the end of the academic year 2009/10, along with a selection of their library activity over three years (2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10): library item circulation, visits to the main GCW University Library, and e-resources usage represented by authentication against AthensDA.

View this item on the University Repository: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/4540/

QR codes in the Library project

Posted on February 7th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

In the run-up to our annual Library staff away day, a few of us (CL, MN, PS, EV, you?) are conducting an internal mini-research project on the potential for using QR codes in the Library.

QR codes (“Quick Response” codes) are two-dimensional, black-and-white, square barcodes that can be used around the library to provide users with links to additional information about resources and services on the web. Codes can be recognised and decoded by a smartphone with a built-in camera and web browser (and QR code-reading software installed), simply by pointing the phone’s camera at the barcode.

QR codes seem to be taking off, slowly but surely, in academic libraries, as well as outside them.

photo_ejournals_frame [old photo]

Suggested reading:

  • Ashford, R. (2010) QR codes and academic libraries: reaching mobile users. College & Research Libraries News [Online], 71(10). pp.526–530. Available from: http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/10/526.full [Accessed on 7 February 2011]
  • Stainthorp, P. (2010) Tech tips for libraries: QR codes. SCONUL Focus [Online], (50). p.14. Available from: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/3409/ [Accessed on 7 February 2011]
  • Walsh, A. (2009) Quick response codes and libraries. Library Hi Tech News [Online], 26 (5/6). pp.7–9. Available from: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/5209/ [Accessed on 1 September 2010]

In case you haven’t seen one before, here’s an example of a (self-referential) QR code: