Enjoy the spring weather and the website updates!

Updates made to the website:

• we are working on pulling the number of holds so they appear when you click on "check availability"
• the pagination works when you click on a facet (those boxes which contain topics in the Books, Movies & Music tabs) and we have included the page numbering at the top of the box for additional convenience
• we will provide a place and space for the Featured Lists found on the current website to reside on the new website

Keep your comments coming ~ we're listening!

What we know......

Wow - thx for the comments! Your input is much appreciated ~ keep them coming! Here are some of the things we know that is happening during this beta period:

• the site will be slower loading than it should be. we have not optimized the website and will do so before launch date so that it loads more quickly
• the site can perform actions more slowly now due to the regular import of catalog items that is happening. in fact you may get error messages on the screen as a result. please bear with us!

Lastly, your comments regarding the Recently Ordered have generated conversations internally - thank you!

Beta Launch Week!

Look for the article on Wednesday's website which directs you to the url to preview the new website. After weeks of blogs and updates, we can finally unveil the website for your live interaction!

We hope you will take the new website for a test drive. Please know that it's still under development and we are still working on improvements. Your input is important to us; use this blog to post your comments and observations.

In the meantime and ahead of the Wednesday article, the new website can be found here. Enjoy!

Updates for the week - progress made

Greetings this second Monday in March to all. This post arrives with the good news that one of our technical details has been resolved. In the testing and searching performed on the new site, we have noticed that some titles have not pulled in complete information. So ~ all you see is the author and title ~ but no description and no MARC record. When we check the catalog this information IS there........

Sleuthing has revealed the problem with non-Latin characters (e.g. the accents over letters) causing a hiccup. It seemed to stick out like a sore thumb with the Harry Potter books! Why? The illustrator is French! Once we rewrote code (yea, John!) then we could start the import process for these items to provide better data to end users.

Another piece of progress is the ability to more quickly see "extras" that have been in the catalog but not originally in the website design. Now clicking on "view extras" can provide professional reviews, series information and table of contents.

Our work continues ~ here's hoping this week brings only rain and not snow. My flower bed is starting to think spring!

Reviews are up and running!

Updates have been made to the website account portion of the new website. Users can now write their reviews directly to the site. This is a great feature for our staff who regularly submit content on all types of materials. We hope to see lots of non-staff input, too.

Since we've announced this update to staff, the Picks carousel (where new reviews are immediately posted) has already turned over new content! The tiny screen shot posted here shows the Picks carousel.