Even though you have options to use cover art for books from both Syndetics and Amazon, there are some titles for which there are no covers available. So, we created a few placeholder images you can use instead. This is useful if you have 3 or so books in your Books from the Catalog box, and two have covers while the 3rd one does not. In order for all items to align nicely within a box, it would be helpful to have an image to use for the 3rd cover. Here are the cover art images you can use for this, depending on which cover placeholder you like, and what size you need:
We have had several reports that the LibGuides applications for Facebook have had intermittent problems over the last week or so. Since the applications have not been changed in some time, it appears that the problem may be with the Facebook API. This is further supported by the Facebook Developers Platform Live Status page at http://developers.facebook.com/live_status.php, which is currently showing an “API Latency”, which is the likely source of the error.
We will continue to monitor the status of the applications over the next few days, and hopefully the problem will resolve itself once the “latency” has been addressed by Facebook. In the event that this does not repair the issue, we will address the problem on our end if at all possible.
We are excited to announce the general availability of the Serials Solutions import tool for LibGuides. This management tool enables our common subscribers to create Database A-Z LibGuides powered by the authoritative e-resource data from Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks. If you subscribe to both LibGuides and any 360 services or Summon, you can now import your entire database list into LibGuides via an easy to use management screen!
We would like to thank the team at Serials Solutions, who were extremely helpful and responsive during the development of this new functionality, as well as the following LibGuides libraries who participated in the BETA program for this new feature: SUNY Westchester Community College, Grand Valley State University, Palm Beach Atlantic University, and Mississippi State University!
We have a new, incredibly useful, report available for the LibAnswers Analytics module – the Visual Data Analyzer. It enables you to create custom X/Y Charts for any combination of metadata values, for even greater insight into how your reference service *really* works. Yes, you heard it right – now you can pick any two parameters in your reference tracking metadata (i.e. the stuff you decided to track and record for your reference transactions) and get a visual representation of the relationship between them, in real time.
For example, What is the breakdown of patron types who asked their question at the Reference desk? Check. How long did the transactions take at the Circulation desk? Check. For Undergraduate students, what is the distribution of Method for asking the question (live ref, sms, email, chat, etc)? Check. How about for Faculty? Check again. We can go on and on about the endless possibilities for using this cool new reporting tool - the only limits are your imagination and the number of metadata fields you track. Previously, this type of insight was only available to you if you were a master of excel pivot tables and were able to import your reference data into excel and then spend hours messing with the pivot tables every time you waned to see a new angle on your data.
Now, anyone can just log on to LibAnswers Analytics and with few clicks get beautiful charts for any combination of data *in real time*. If you couldn’t tell from the tone of this blog post, we are obviously super-excited about this new Analytics feature. Once you try it out we think you will be too. Simply select the ”Visual Data Analyzer” option from the Analytics tab and off you go.
Big thanks to Anthony @ LaTrobe University (our long-time client) for giving us the idea for this feature and helping us implement it. We have the best clients in the world! Keep the good ideas and feature suggestions coming.
What a great way to end the year – with Charles Darwin University becoming LibGuides member library #1000. Congratulations to all LibGuides sites for being part of such an amazing community of educators!
We have scheduled several online demos for Thursday and Friday of this week to introduce people to our exciting LibAnswers system. What is LibAnswers you ask? Well – LibAnswers is a web-based question-and-answer system and FAQ builder for libraries. It enables patrons to search the knowledge base and ask questions from anywhere. Our auto-suggest feature matches the patron’s question with an existing answer in the system, and they are automatically taken to the correct answer when a match is found. LibAnswers also integrates with Twitter, LibGuides (of course!), and any chat widgets you may already be using at your library.
The demo sessions will be conducted via Voice Over IP, so you will need to have speakers to join the session. We are not able to take questions during the presentations, so please send all questions to sales@springshare.com and indicate that you attended the webinar.
Happy New Year to all the LibGuides admins, librarians and content creators around the world! This quick blog post is to let you all know that the yearly statistics clean-up for LibGuides was performed this afternoon. This annual maintenance ensures that our database and reporting engine are optimized and ready to support another record year of LibGuides usage!
For those of you who joined LibGuides in 2009 and have not gone through this process before, rest assured that no statistics information is lost during the clean-up process. The only visible change is that the “views this year” count for your guides has been updated to reflect only the hits generated so far this year.
If you have any questions about the clean-up process, our LibGuides reporting engine, or what we all did for New Year’s Eve, please send us an email at support@springshare.com. Thank you…and here’s to a happy and prosperous 2010!
We are very excited to announce a partnership with Syndetics Solutions, to enable you to use Syndetics book covers in LibGuides “Books from the Catalog” content boxes. You do not have to be a Syndetics subscriber to use this new functionality. We are thankful to our friends at Syndetics for working with us to make this a core LibGuides feature.
As an added bonus, if utilizing Syndetics book covers you can also select the size of the book cover image to use (small/medium/large).
Besides book covers, Syndetics offers a whole range of high quality content to enhance library online catalogs, so you should check out their offerings – http://www.syndetics.com. Your catalog will spring to life, and your patrons will love it!
We have added another statistics report to the already sizable Reference Analytics module functionality – the “Daily/Hourly Question Distribution” table. The report is available from the “Reference Statistics” and “Reports Wizard” screens in the Reference Analytics Tab.
The report shows the number of questions asked each hour, for all Mondays, all Tuesdays, all Wednesdays, etc. during a specified time period. Since the daily reference patterns can vary greatly depending on the days of the week, this report is really helpful in determining what are the busy periods for reference, so that you can staff accordingly.
With this new report in the LibAnswers Analytics module you can even get the daily/hourly distributions at specific reference service points, i.e. at any number of service points you define in the Analytics module.
If you think of any other reports ideas for the Analytics module, please do let us know. Props to Susan @ LMU for giving us the idea for this report.
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