Matthew Reidsma mreidsma

The Library with a Thousand Databases: Web Scale Discovery and The Hero's Journey

In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell laid out a narrative pattern he saw across myths, stories, and religious rituals that he called The Hero's Journey. The hero moved out of the ordinary world into the "Special realm," where she encountered all manner of obstacles before coming back to the ordinary world transformed.

As librarians, it's easy for us to forget that many patrons leave the ordinary world for the "special realm" of library research databases when they use our services. For decades, these tools have been disconnected, proprietary tools that require a truly epic amount of effort from our hero/patrons if they are to find their treasure (usually articles, books, or citations). But it doesn't have to be this way. We can make the journey easier for our patrons with the right tools and an eye toward improving the search experience.

More information on the conference at [http://www.ni

Library Website Triage

Short Description

Do you know your library website needs work but you're not sure where to start? In this workshop, I'll show you a number of ways to improve your library websites quickly and easily. Participants should be willing to volunteer their own library websites, and will walk away with an understanding of how to fix common website access, usage, and performance problems and also how to measure the impact of these changes (all in 90 minutes!).

Detailed Description for the Committee

I'll take volunteered websites and work through a number of common problems that might be plaguing the site, including usability, accessibility, and performance issues. By using the browser's Inspector, I'll show participants how to make changes to a site on-the-fly and quickly measure the impact of that change by using online tools. I'll encourage participants to follow along on their own computers, and give some exercises to learn the basics of the Web Inspector.

Holistic Tech: Harness Your Library's Data Fetish to Solve the Right Problems

Session Abstract

Libraries have jumped on the User Experience bandwagon of late, rethinking our tools and services with a new focus on patron needs. But we still see things differently than our patrons. Where we see discrete services supporting our larger mission, patrons only see a confusing website. Without a holistic view, we spend our time solving the wrong problems.

Fortunately, we have everything we need locked up in data silos. In this presentation, I'll talk about how to get that data out of the dark and make it a powerful tool in reshaping your library's commitment to service.

Full Description

Sierra's hard coded error messages

If a patron tries to request an item and their account is locked, they get this terrific message. Besides being HUGE RED TEXT it is completely unhelpful in letting the patron know who to ask and how to get ahold of someone who can help them. So I fixed it with CSS and markup, since this silly message is hard-coded and can't be changed. You just need to edit the request_result.html file in Web Master and look for the section that looks like this:

<!--{iferror}-->
<!--{errormsg}-->
<!--{else}-->

This is what the absolute positioning looks like. Yuck.

	// Create modal dialog for requesting journals
	if($("#bib_items").find("td:contains('PERIODICALS')") && $("#bib_items").find("td:contains('ASRS')")) {

	// This is a periodical.

	var journalTitle = encodeURIComponent($("td.bibInfoLabel:contains('Title')").first().next("td").text());
	journalTitle = journalTitle.replace(/\s/g, '+');
	console.log(journalTitle);
	var journalIssn = $("td.bibInfoLabel:contains('ISSN')").first().next("td").text();
	journalIssn = journalIssn.replace(/\-/g,"");

	#!/bin/bash

	for file in ~/Desktop/old_figures/*
	do
	sips --setProperty dpiHeight 300.000 --setProperty dpiWidth 300.000 --setProperty format tiff --setProperty formatOptions lzw $file --out ~/Desktop/new_figures/`basename $file .png`.tiff

	done

	$(document).ready(function() {

	if(($(".bibItemsEntry").find("a.top-row-buttons").length > 0) && ($(".bibItemsEntry").find("a.top-row-buttons").find('img').attr("alt") == "ARS Request")) {

	$("table#bib_items").prepend('<tr><td colspan="3"><div style="display: block;line-height: 1.25em;margin: 1em 0;padding: 1em 2.5%;background: #ffff7f;border: 1px solid #cc6;text-align: left;color: #444;width:94%;font-size:.8125em;">The automated storage and retrieval system is down. Please call the library at 616-331-3500 if you need this item.</div></td></tr>');

	}

	});

	user_id \| email \| major \| last_updated
	------------+----------------------------+--------------------------+---------------------
	1231o8433 \| [email protected] \| Economics \| 1375980483
	------------+----------------------------+--------------------------+---------------------
	873648737 \| [email protected] \| Philosophy \| 1375980483
	------------+----------------------------+--------------------------+---------------------
	879472974 \| [email protected] \| Engineering \| 1375980483
	------------+----------------------------+--------------------------+---------------------

	// Reword the Scholarly Facet to be more readable

	$('label[for="facet:is_scholarly"]').text('Peer-reviewed and other scholarly publications');