As we slide towards July

As of this week, all is fairly quiet in the website world. We continue to post new content while back-end changes are being made as we work through our list of these to-do's. Please feel free to provide your input either to this blog or to the Website Feedback link you find in the footer. We're happy to help!

My "in the meantime" post this week takes you to our neighbor blog, Sizzling Showdown. We have been running a weekly contest of titles in which you get to vote for your favorite. Check out the blog. We were running adult mysteries in May (and I'm not giving away the winner!). June features a different set of childrens titles a week. This is your last chance to vote for books about real kids before we move onto teen titles. If nothing else, you can find a great selection of titles you may not have heard about!

Happy reading!

News for the week

You can now see the Classic Catalog tab on the website. Easy access for those who want to search this interface.

Look in the near future for more lists of new materials under the Coming Soon links. We're working on it!

In the meantime, I received a great question from a patron who was looking for ebooks (those which you download and read off of another device). You can find them on our site through a couple of different paths:
1. Books tab > Browse books box > Ebooks
2. OnDemand tab > Browse box > Online books

These paths will take you to our vendor website where you can peruse a number of ebook titles. But then he asked what kind of ereader he should buy. There are many options and more are being brought to market all the time! I suggested a couple of articles from PC Magazine and from Wired Magazine which discuss features. Happy reading - what is your preferred format and why?

Of Incremental Changes

to be made and yet forthcoming is the following:

creating a more prominent link/button/navigation element to the classic catalog. There are search elements within the classic catalog and are not on the website that you may use. Please link to the classic catalog for these features. Among them are the ability to click on a subject heading to find like materials and the ease in choosing titles which are volumes (think travel books, SAT books or tax books). Questions? Ask here!

Besides making changes to the website, we continue to work on data to ensure the most up to date content is on the website.

Summer reading has kicked off in all of our branches and people are really excited about it! Numerous comments have already been posted to the teensite and adults have provided reviews to the mainsite, too! Thank you! If you did not know, Tales Treehouse is also asking for reviews from children. Enjoy the summer!

Enhanced Search Results - The Details

This story provides more detail to the enhanced search results posted in the last two posts.

Cover Image: The large cover image we used originally was requested by some patrons, but in the context of search results, it took up too much room. The cover image was made smaller to accommodate more information about each search result in a smaller space.

Publication Date: The publication date is now available. For items with more than one date, the first date is shown.

Format: The format was previously available in two places – as an image and as text. The format information is now only an image placed to the right side of the other information. The format image contains a word or words to describe the format. For some newer items, or items with brief bib records, the format may not be available.

Add to Cart: The “Add to Cart” button now has the cart icon on it, is smaller, and is placed to the right of the other information, instead of below the image.

Check Availability: There is now a “Check Availability” button below the “Add to Cart” button. It pulls availability information and holds (if any) directly from the III server. This is the same information available to users of the classic catalog, but is more complete for titles with many items, and requires fewer clicks. This allows patrons to view availability without moving away from the search results.

Shortened description: The description needed to be shortened to shrink the overall size of the search results.

Close link: The “Close” link on the pop-up box won’t wipe out search results any more!

Note: because the search uses the classic catalog to produce results, the number of items per page remains the same, even though the space used by each search result is smaller. You will also see the new format when browsing the “facets” on the Books, Movies and Music pages. The facets are produced by a III product called Feedbuilder, so the information available for new items is somewhat different than the information provided by search results. The newest items may have very little information available, but can still be added to the cart. You will see these changes for the “Coming Soon” lists in the near future.

Enhanced Search Results Live!

When you conduct a search, you will now see the new search results as mentioned earlier this week........

You will see this same presentation when you click on any of the searches in the Browse boxes in Books, Movies and Music!

Enhancing Search Results

We're keeping tabs of the input and comments from y'all and will be shortly releasing our enhanced search results for you.

Among changes being made include decreased white space in search results, smaller covers, linking to item availability, adding the publication date and making the format type more obvious.

We hope these changes will be as appealing to you as they were to us as we worked on revisions! Stay tuned! A special post will be released when these changes are live!