New Features of the SMS Module for LibAnswers

June 14, 2010

We are pleased to announce a first major update of the SMS Module for LibAnswers. Our SMS Module clients now have these 3 exciting new functions available to them:

  1. Send an SMS.
    You can now send direct SMS messages to patrons from LibAnswers (i.e. not just reply to a text message sent by a patron but also initiate a text message as well). On the My Admin screen click on the “Send SMS” link, per below:


    This opens up many new opportunities in utilizing the SMS module functionality. Here are several scenarios for when this new feature comes in really handy:

    For example, if a reference librarian is helping a patron at a reference desk but needs more time to complete the research, they can send an SMS message to the patron when done – while the patron is somewhere else in the library, e.g. studying or browsing the stacks. TXTing them is less intrusive than a phone call yet more timely than an email – an ideal use for the new “Send an SMS” feature in LibAnswers.

    Librarians can also use this new feature to notify patrons when a book or an interlibrary loan they requested arrives. Another neat use scenario is the following – say a patron is at a reference desk asking for a specific item – rather than taking a printout with the information about the article/book/whatever the librarian can simply TXT the information to the patron so they will have it with them in their phone for easy access.

    These are just a few exciting ideas on how to use the new “Send an SMS” feature to make the communication and interaction with patrons more effective!

  2. SMS auto-response keywords.
    This is just too cool. Imagine texting “hours” and getting an automatic response with the library’s working hours. Or texting “summer reads” and immediately getting back a list of fun summer reading recommendations compiled by librarians. How about texting “new dvds” to get the list of new dvd arrivals?

    Our new SMS keywords feature makes all this possible. With it you are able to define any number of SMS “keywords” and when patrons text that keyword to your local LibAnswers SMS number they get an instant auto-response that you defined. Pretty awesome, right? We thought so too! The possibilities for this feature are truly endless. You can get as creative as you want in getting timely and useful information to patrons. It’s an ideal tool for conducting marketing campaigns in your library.


    You can define as many keywords as  you want, and each keyword can have a response of up to 300 characters (e.g. two sms messages of 150 characters each). The keywords are not case sensitive, so if you define “Hours”, it will work just as good as “hours” or “HOURS”.

    Besides the examples mentioned above (“hours”, “new dvds”, “summer reads”) here are a few more ideas to get started with the keywords feature for your library:

    - For libraries with multiple branches or multi-library campuses text the library name for hours of each location.
    -”Directions” for the directions of how to get to the library.
    -”Book club” for the book club meeting times/locations.
    -”Events” for the listing of events at the library for any given week/month.
    -”New arrivals” to get the list of new arrivals.
    -”Keywords” – an automatic message with all the available keywords you defined! :)

    As you can see, we are super-excited about this SMS Automatic keywords feature and we hope we were able to pass some of that excitement on to you because your library marketing and patron communication can take a big leap forward with this new feature.

    The SMS keywords are set up in the System Settings tab, under the “SMS Module setup” submenu.

  3. Ability to define “off-hours” autoresponders for each day of the week.
    This is not an entirely new feature but an enhancement of the existing one. Previously, you were able to define “off-hours” auto-responders (i.e. if someone sends an SMS question at 2am, you are able to define the off-hours automatic response) but you were limited in defining one for the weekdays and one for the weekends. This worked well if your hours are the same for Mon-Fri, and then for Sat-Sun, but if you had different hours on Fri than on Mon-Thu (for example) it didn’t quite work for you. So, we re-coded this feature to let you define the hours of operation for every day of the week separately. If you had the auto-response times defined previously please go back to them and redefine them for each day.

    These are customized in the System Settings tab, under the “SMS Module setup” submenu.

As always, let us know what you think (support@springshare.com) and if you have your own ideas on how to make the LibAnswers and SMS module work even better, please let us know – we’re all ears when it comes to this stuff!

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Posted by slavenzivkovic

LibAnswers – Instant Message Notifications for New Questions/Comments

February 25, 2010

We rolled out the initial (beta) release of the LibAnswers/Instant Messanger integration, so please check it out. Log on to your main LibAnswers admin page (My Admin) and under System Settings tab select “IM Notifications” option. This is where you can setup the integration (you must have a valid GTalk account to do this, but you can use any IM aggregator, e.g. Meebo, Digsby, etc. to receive IM notifications).

Once you set this up, any time a new question, or a new comment is submitted to your LibAnswers system you will get an Instant Message notification (in addition to the email notification which is still there).

Let us know what you think – this is only the first release of this IM integration and we’d like to improve on it based on your feedback.

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"No Cover Art" Placeholder Images for Books

February 3, 2010

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:

small
(94px)		 Cover art url: http://lgimages.s3.amazonaws.com/nc-sm.gif
medium
(187px)		 Cover art url: http://lgimages.s3.amazonaws.com/nc-md.gif
small
(94px)		 Cover art url: http://lgimages.s3.amazonaws.com/gc-sm.gif
medium
(187px)		 Cover art url: http://lgimages.s3.amazonaws.com/gc-md.gif

 

This is where you should insert one of the above urls, depending on which you want to use:

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Posted by slavenzivkovic

Embedding Wolfram Alpha Search Widget Inside your LibGuides

October 17, 2009

You have probably heard about Wolfram Alpha by now. It is a new search engine/technology – a “computational knowledge engine that draws on multiple sources to answer user queries directly.” (quote from their website).  Some people think it’s the next big thing in search, others disagree, but one thing is true – it’s a neat technology. Recently, the folks behind it released the Wolfram Alpha widgets which can be embedded into any website to allow visitors to query the Wolfram Alpha search engine from anywhere. http://www.wolframalpha.com/addtoyoursite.html

We have prepared step-by-step instructions for embedding the Wolfram Alpha search widget into your LibGuides. You can find the instructions at the following url:

 http://help.libguides.com/content.php?pid=76937&sid=569946.

Enjoy!

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Item Linking and Reusing of Content

February 16, 2009

After a few months of working on this (thank you to all our clients who suggested and contributed to the idea), I am very pleased to announce a major step in the evolution of LibGuides: item-level linking and reusing of content in the system.

Say what? Here’s the scoop… Previously, you were able to “link to” (i.e. reuse) the LibGuides pages and the LibGuides content boxes. For example, you’d create a page (or a box) on one guide and then simply “link” to it on any other guide/page (i.e. make it appear on another guide). The neat thing about this is that any changes to the original page/box would be instantly reflected on all “linked” pages/boxes. That saved you a lot of effort when creating new content. Well, now you can do the same with individual Links and Documents – “add once use anywhere” type of thing. This is a rather major new functionality which will make creating and maintaining your guides even easier.

reuselinks

When you are adding a new link (or a new document) the dialog will look something like the screenshot above. If you want to reuse an existing link (or a document) click on the “Reuse Existing” tab and just start typing the name of the item you want to reuse. The system will search for it and give you the list of all matches to pick from. Pretty cool stuff.

As part of this upgrade we also added an administrative screen to “Manage Assets”. Admins can go to My Admin -> Admin Toolbox -> Manage Assets page, and see where each Link/Rss/Podcast/Video/Document appears and on which guides it is linked to (if any). This is a welcome addition to the administrative toolbox because it enables admins to get an instant overview of what appears where in their system (and where it is linked to, i.e. reused).

We didn’t stop there, either. In addition to this major new feature of reusing links and documents, we have also added a new feature when adding a  new Video/Rss Feed/Podcast item to your guide. Now, whenever you go to add a new video (or a new rss feed or a new podcast) you will be able to search the system for any existing videos/rss/podcasts to copy. For example, the new “Add Video” dialog looks like this:

reusevideo

You start typing the title of the video (or rss feed/podcast) and the system searches the LibGuides community to see if someone has already added it. Then, when you find what you were looking for the system automatically gives you the code to include inside your guide.

This means you can now search the LibGuides content database of web 2.0 media (videos, rss feeds, podcasts) to include inside your guides. Granted we’re not YouTube (yet ;)  but the amount of content created in LibGuides is growing by leaps and bounds (for example, there are over 800,000 links in the system already) and the more content there is the more everybody can benefit from it.

One last note on this new Video/Rss/Podcast search. The searching for Links and Documents (for reuse) is limited to your own system (i.e. no content from other institutions is included when you search for other links and documents), but the Video/Rss/Podcast search is community-wide. In other words, it will search the entire LibGuides community (the content from 500+ institutions to date). We figured that most, if not all, of these videos and other web 2.0 media are already publicly available (thru YouTube and the like) so there’s no reason why you couldn’t search for them in LibGuides as well, even though they are added by another institution in many cases. Please let us know what you think of this and if there is a concern about privacy (or any other aspect that we’re missing). We can easily limit these searches to your own institution only, if there are issues involved or if the majority of people would rather have it that way.

Thank you again for using LibGuides and thanks to all who contributed to this major new milestone in the development of the system. Many new exciting possibilities for the use (and reuse) of LibGuides are now within reach with this addition of the Item Linking and Reusing of Content. As always, let us know what you think – support at springshare dot com.

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Posted by slavenzivkovic

Updating the LibGuides Facebook Apps.

February 5, 2009

Some of you may notice that our three Facebook applications are unstable (or even not working) for the next couple of weeks. Do not be alarmed – we are working on updating (in fact, re-writing) all three of our FB apps to take advantage of the new Facebook API. It was frustrating to have to change the code all the time because Facebook API kept changing (from the original specifications, in the early days) so we had to scrap the old code and re-write the whole thing.

We will do our best to not have to make people re-install the applications but this may be unavoidable, unfortunately. We will post and update on this blog soon, when the apps are finished, but I just wanted to give you a heads up so you know what’s going on.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns – support at springshare dot com.

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Internet Explorer Browser Caching Issue

November 24, 2008

In the last few weeks we had several problem reports where users said that the previously deleted content magically reappears on their guides, or that text entered into the rich text editor reverts to its previous version (and/or that text changes are not being saved), or that the list of tabs is not updating after making changes to it, etc. All these (and a few other) issues have one thing in common (and the same fix) - your browser (mostly Internet Explorer)  is caching web pages so your newly entered content gets overwritten with the cached version of the same page which your browser saved earlier in the session.

If using Internet Explorer to edit your guides, it is very important (make that critically important) to make sure your browser is not caching pages. We have instructions about this on the login page (under the “Important information for Internet Explorer Users”) but it seems a lot of people miss it there, so here are the detailed instructions on how to prevent IE from caching pages. Please take a moment and make sure your IE settings are as described below:

1) In your IE, select Tools -> Internet Options. A new window should pop up, which looks like this:

2) Click on the “Settings” button circled above. This should open up another pop-up window which looks like this:

3) Make sure the the option “Every time I visit the webpage” is selected. Then click the OK button which will close this window, and then click the “Apply” and “OK” buttons on the previous window.

4) Lastly, please restart your browser and you should be good to go.

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Google Scholar Content Box & 'Linked Pages' Feature

October 21, 2008

Thanks to the continued (excellent) feedback from our clients, we are pleased to announce the availability of two new features in LibGuides:

1) Google Scholar Content Box. This content box enables users to search the Google Scholar database from LibGuides. The librarian can also create a “default query” for users of Google Scholar. The query will appear when the visitor loads the box. Since Google has not yet released the official API for Google Scholar we have to open search results in a new window for now, directly on Google site. As soon as Google releases the API we’ll be able to display the Scholar results inside the LibGuides content boxes.

 2) “Linked Pages” feature. Until now, a user could only make a plain copy of another page in the system to display on their guide. Let’s say I have a guide called “Research Basics” and, by using the “Copy Page From Another Guide” feature, I copy a page from Jane’s guide – her “Primary Sources” page. This makes an exact copy of her page inside my guide so that I can then change this “Primary Sources” page on my guide and tailor it to my needs.

With the new function we are introducing today, I can now also make a “linked copy” of Jane’s “Primary Sources” page, to show up on my guide. But, now if/when Jane changes the “Primary Sources” page on her guide, the changes will automatically show on my linked page as well. Pretty cool, huh?

As always, let us know what you think and keep the feedback coming…

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Link Checker Function in LibGuides

September 25, 2008

I am pleased to announce the availability of the link checker function in LibGuides. The system will check for broken links inside LibGuides boxes (for all boxes except the rich text box type) twice a month and produce the report which will enable you to fix these broken links easily. The function is available on the main admin screen, please see the screenshot below.

As always, your feedback and suggestions are always appreciated so try out the link checker and let us know what you think.

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LibGuides Integration with Twitter

August 20, 2008

We’ve achieved a lot of “firsts” in the Library software world in terms of web 2.0 stuff – LibGuides was one of the first commercial library software with a Facebook app (we now have three), among the first to integrate with Del.icio.us, etc.

Today I am pleased to announce another “first” and, perhaps, the coolest one yet – Twitter integration. Now when you publish a new guide you can broadcast the news on Twitter for all your faithful followers to see. Anybody subscribed to your Twitter updates will see the name of your newly published guide and the URL to access it. It’s a great way to advertise your guides to the Twitter universe (which is getting bigger by the minute)!

Pretty cool stuff, you must admit. We thought so too…

The “post to twitter” option is available on the change status screen, when you go to change the status of your guide to “published”.

I’d like to thank our tech team, especially the resident Twitter-expert Marc, for implementing another “first”web 2.0 integration in the commercial library software world, thereby solidifying the LibGuides’ position as the leading web 2.0 platform for libraries! 

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