Updated Version of Library Catalogue Launching December 11
The library is happy to announce some improvements to our catalogue. The new version, launching on Thursday, December 11, includes a number of changes you’ve been asking for. For the past two weeks, we have been beta testing these changes with a group of library users, and their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Your Account
Customer accounts have been reorganized and common functions have been made easier to use. Changes include:
- Separate screens for the account summary, checked-out items, holds, and account settings
- Separation of holds into sections: available for pickup, in transit, and still on hold
Also:
- A simplified process for making holds active or inactive
- A display of missed holds that you did not pick up on time.
- The option to choose a “screen name” that displays at the top of each page when the customer is logged in.
Item records
Item records are easier to read. Repeated headings have been removed, and it’s easier to scan'to see whether any copies are in the library
Other Changes
- A permanent link feature makes it easy to bookmark or save links to individual items or search results
Also:
- The catalogue’s layout has been improved. Spacing and alignment have been adjusted to improve readability
- Some changes have been made to make keyword searching work better
- Error messages have been rewritten to be more meaningful
Outstanding Issues
Other improvements we would like to make have not yet been implemented.
These issues include:
- Slow response time – reported by a few customers
- Holds on “on order” items do not display your position in the holds queue
- Search results do not always seem relevant
The library is working hard to resolve these issues. While these issues are important to us and our users, they will take more time and work to resolve. With continued feedback from our users, we will be better able to serve our customers.
We will continue to report on our progress through regular updates on this blog.
After the launch
We hope you’ll agree that the new version of the catalogue is a significant improvement. During and after the launch, customers can direct questions to the Library’s Answerline service (416-393-7131). We also welcome your feedback through comments on this blog or the library’s official customer feedback form.
Thank you for your interest and support.
31 thoughts on “Updated Version of Library Catalogue Launching December 11”
Great news! Looking forward to the improvements.
I find it a nuisance to be taken direcctly to the catalogue if I have asked for my account. I don’t see that you are going to change this, but perhaps you are. If not, I hope you will consider it.
Ms. Dickenson’s comment about being taken to the catalogue when you log in to your account is so true; very irritating! And even when you start out with the catalog, and then place a hold by entering your information, the system doesn’t keep the info, and if hyou click on My Account you have to re-enter it. Will be watching to see if the update has fixed this.
Thanks for all these comments. We have definitely improved the overall usability of the system. Given the universal feeling from customers on these issues in particular we will create a post specifically on usability changes to the catalogue that you will see when we go live rather than put the details in a comment.
Thanks again,
Dara
Will there be any downtime while the system is upgraded? I’m looking forward to these enhancements.
Looks very sick. Can’t wait until it’s released. Looks like a major improvement over the current interface.
I actually like having all of my account info in one place – seeing all of my checkouts and holds on the same page, so that I don’t have to go to separate pages each time I check my library account. I also won’t panic as much when I see “Overdue: 1”, wondering what could possibly be overdue.
Ditto with the signing-in and the catalogue issue, although I’m not too concerned about clicking one more time on “Your Account”.
We have a terrific library system, and I congratulate you all on your attempts to be responsive.
With that in mind, a couple of things on my wish list:
CAn we not have some online method of (a) recommending books that we would like the library to acquire, and (b)an online request form for inter-library loan. On this latter point, some of the smallest and poorly funded libraries in the country have this capacity; it can’t be very difficult, surely. And, (c), why is it necessary to actually go into one of the two Reference Libraries in order to order a microfilm from inter-library loan? There is this rule that you have to order it from a branch that has a microfilm reader, and these seem to be the only ones that do. I can see that this is where yo would go to look at it, but why do we have to make a special trip there just to order it? – 2 TTC tokens.
Re – downtime, we don’t expect downtime worth noting. We run two servers to balance the number of users we have. When we upgrade, we do one server at a time. During the ‘switch over’ from one server to the other, there is a minute or two of downtime.
However, there are other times when we have to bring the entire system down. For example when we work on our internet connection and network infrastructure, which is exactly what occurred last weekend, all services are unavailable for a lengthy period.
Thanks,
Dara
The Cataloge is not working right now, is that something to do with the updates?
Something that would be great is to be able to save a history of books I’ve checked out. Sometimes I want to refer back to a book I had and can’t remember if I’ve had it from the library or when.
Will that ever be available?
Currently if there is an error in the entered search-string or if the user is unsure of the correct title or author name, the current catalog system provides no help at all.
Google and other search engines are smart enough to detect typo errors, misspelled words and handle “fuzzy” search strings, they will suggest “corrected” search-strings plus results.
Suggest a major enhancement to borrow, graft or write these functions into the library search program.
The changes sound interesting. I’ll be looking forward to them. One thing that I don’t see mentioned here, that was on the old site, is the ability to create a wishlist of things you would like to take out on loan, but don’t want on your hold list yet. I often run my hold list up to the 50 item limit and it would be nice to have somewhere to put other items I’m interested in. It would be also nice to have the facility to move items from either list to the other.
Great questions everyone! I’ll try and answer them in sequence:
1) Catalogue is down – not related to upcoming changes, as it turns out we run two servers, one is down, keep refreshing your page, you will get the other one – ideally it would work better than this sorry about the inconvenience – we are working to resolve the issue.
2) Borrowing history – a future post will talk about why the library does not offer this feature and what you might expect to see in the future in this area. Starting on Thursday you will be able to bookmark and copy links from items, as an interim step this may be a useful alternative. It is worth noting that in 2009 we will enable you to share items to common social networks such as Facebook, Digg and Delicious.
3) Detect Typos and correcting search strings – the Endeca Search Engine includes this functionality. We will introduce Endeca in 2009 so this and other great search features will be available across TPL content.
4) Wish List – We will write about this one when we write about 2) but as with 2), sharing or posting to social networks may help you in this regard – and this is will be a feature when we implement the new Endeca Search Engine in 2009.
What about the booklist?
hi,
as regards the slow loading of TPL pages (Outstanding Issues, bullet #2): if the complainants are linux users, they may well be able to fix the issue by issuing the following command as root from a terminal:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling
From what I can’tell, this issues emanates from a broken/misconfigured router that fails to conform to internet standards, in particular RFC1323 (you can see the text of that standard here: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1323.txt ).
You can find more about this at the following web page:
http://www.linuxnet.ch/index.php/TCP_Window_Scaling
so basically, for linux users there is a workaround available, but the real solution is to configure TPL’s routers to conform to internet standards! At least that’s how I read the situation, though admittedly i’m no expert.
thanks for the new website!
— Matt
ps, for those who want to know what that command is actually doing, here’s a description of the relevant parameter:
tcp_window_scaling
Enable RFC1323 TCP window scaling. It is enabled by default. This feature allows the use of a large window (> 64K) on a TCP connection, should the other end support it. Normally, the 16 bit window length field in the TCP header limits the window size to less than 64K bytes. If larger windows are desired, applications can increase the size of their socket buffers and the window scaling option will be employed. If tcp_window_scaling is disabled, TCP will not negotiate the use of window scaling with the other end during connection setup.
One thing I would like to see is the capability for me to change the sort preference for the list of searched items returned (seach results) – by author first name, author last name, item title, published date, item subject, item type (book, CD, DVD, articles), etc.
By the way, what order are the items displayed when I do a search and if I do the same search again, will the found items display in the same order every time?
Thank you.
I look forward to the change…thanks for all the hard work and listening to users.
I have four children and would like to take out some of the books that I previously have taken out so my younger children can also see them. I cannot remember them all especially the great educational ones. There was a comment here about a history page where we can view when and what we have taken out in the past. This feature would enable us to view previously loaned books when forgotten after a few years. Would this ever become available?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for posting such detailed information. We are investigating many facets of desktop configuration and our environment in an effort to resolve the performance problems that are reported and your information is very helpful. We have passed on your comment to our IT team who are working on the these performance problems.
Again, thanks for sharing.
Dara
could we have a numeric sort on our place in the hold list?
if you sort now you get 1 of 1 then 1 of 36 then 10 of 125 then 130 of 4568 then 2 of 4 then 27 of 69 then 3 of 3 and so on – Clearly it is doing an alpha sort rather than a numeric sort
While I’ll withhold judgement until Thursday, right now I agree with Fiona: I prefer being able to see all my account info on one page. Is there any way to make this an option for those of us who’d like it?
The improvements to the look of the interface are welcome!
Re, “Our Newest Titles” – as of now, the titles are arranged in alphabetical sequence. Is there a way to arrange the authors names in alphabetical order? I have to spend the time going through every title of the book just to look if my favorite authors are there. (You can rearrange it before but now no more). Thanks for the hard work though. Regards. Esther
Hello,
I was reading through the comments, and there are a few things I’d like to mention.
Mary’s comment reminded me of my University’s library system, where one could opt-in to turn on a “Reading History”. It saved a listing of all items that you checked out, and allowed you to remove items from that list if you deemed them unnecessary. It listed title, author, date checked out and had a details section (for ex, volume 1). You were able to click on the item for bibliographic information, and you could even email the list or save a copy of it to your computer.
Another library system that I used would display the date checked out, and would not allow you to renew the item if the due date was too far out. Basically, this prevented you from using up all your renewals inadvertently, or too soon. It would prevent you from renewing an item that was checked out that day, or from renewing an item if you had already renewed it that same day. Currently, in my TPL account, I took 2 items out on the same day, and one was renewed by the librarian after it was checked out, which reduced my ability to renew it further.
Like Ryk, I too always run up my hold list to 50. It is filled with inactive holds that I would like to read someday. Would the TPL consider expanding a user’s hold list? Maybe, allow a user to have up to 50 inactive holds, and, say, 25 active holds? Or 50 inactive and 50 active? (I personally think 50 active is a bit high, though, as a recent graduate, I can appreciate that researchers might require several items).
I find it irritating when I click on “Your Account”, then sign in, and instead of showing my account page, it brings me to the catalogue. Please consider changing that.
My last comment deals with a situation when you are browsing the catologue without having logged in and you go to place a hold. It would be great if you could add a “log me in” button to the place a hold page. You have already provided your login information to place the hold, could you not also sign in at the same time?
Thank you for reading my lengthy post, and feel free to contact me if you would like more details about the other library systems that I referred to. Thanks too for the work that you are doing to improve this library website.
Have a great day,
Ashley
Will the ‘My List’ feature be brought back? The one where you can ‘bookmark’ items from the catalogue without placing holds on them?
Hi Ken,
Unfortunately we do not have a way to do My List so that it is saved for you each time you visit the website. We know this is a highly sought after feature and are investigating solutions to make this possible.
Have you thought of a link to librarything.com for borrowers? It’s great for keeping a list of what you’ve read and also for recommendations. This is a good replacement for ‘my list’
http://www.librarything.com/
Regarding the new SEARCH Catalogue page—
Could you please centre the gold coloured SEARCH button in a similar fashion to the SIGN IN button on the log in page as it is currently positioned too far to the right and ‘runs off’ my small screen.
Let me see if I can get to everyone who commented.
L.M. – Sometime in 2009 we will introduce a purchase request form. An online form would be great for Inter Library Loan but we haven’t gotten to that one yet. We’re tracking it though! Your comment about microfilms – that is a larger policy question – sorry, I can’t help you there. For more specific information on this contact our Answerline Service. Your sorting question – this isn’t possible in our current system due to the way the information is put into the system. Thanks!
Daniela – see comment response I posted on December 9th about “Wishlists”
Cecil – Next year the ability to refine by more detailed information dynamically will be available, sorting will be further enhanced too – no guarantees, but your suggestions have been noted. The order search results are displayed is by “relevancy” as we already stated, the search engine was not part of this round of improvements, your second point, about different number of items displaying when you re-search will require further investigation. Can you contact Answerline with your search terms so we can look further into it and get back to you?
Mary LR – Borrowing history is on our list of future enhancements.
Camile – You’re right about what it is doing, but I’m not sure, if it can be fixed. We’ll look into it.
David/Fiona – Some features are highly sought after by some and end up being disliked by others. The level of personalization you are suggesting is not possible at the moment. I hope you are able to get used to the new layout and find it intuitive.
Esther – we want to put sorting options on those pages – we are continuing to investigate.
Ashley – re Borrowing or Reading History – it is on our list. Regarding Checked Out Date, that would be a great feature, we’ll speak to our supplier on that one. Your suggestion for handling Inactive Holds is interesting too, I’ll pass that one on to our policy group for exploration. Your Account Link is the number one issue we’re working on and we are making progress. Hopefully we’ll have some good news to share soon! Regarding your last comment, we wanted it to work this way too, we are investigating as part of the next phase of our improvements that will be released in 2009 – not deep enough into that particular issue to know if it is doable, but we’re going to try – Thanks for the detailed comment!
Ken – already responded to you!
Shelley – Re Library Thing, not sure if we could integrate with it just yet, but it is certainly something we’re keeping an eye on.
Sally – Location of the search button, we inadvertently made the site too wide, we’re fixing that and will ensure the button is positioned in a place that will help you.
I hope that answers all your comments – thanks again!
Dara
I would like to add my thanks to Matt for his suggested Linux performance fix for the TPL site. It made a huge difference to the performance that I was experiencing.
Thanks for the helpful post, this is great! By the way, for those linux users who have tried to access the wireless at a TPL using linux and failed, here is a nice guide on how to get it working easily:
http://torontogeek.com/blog/2010/06/how-to-use-wirelesswifi-at-toronto-public-library-with-linux-debian_ubuntu/