For this webquest you're going to use the features of the SILS library OPAC. With SILS, borrowers anywhere in the province of Saskatchewan may use their library card to request any book in the entire province for delivery to their local library.
These are the skills you need to develop for this activity:
- Read and follow instructions.
- Understand the requirements of locating a book in the SILS online database or OPAC.
- Locate specific titles in the OPAC and find required information.
- Take accurate notes to answer specific questions.
Steps in this activity:- Locate the title requested in SILS.
- Check the location and availability of each requested title.
- Check the subject headings listed for each requested title.
The task outlined step-by-step (take careful notes):- Go to the SILS Encore catalogue at: http://encore.sasklibraries.ca/iii/encore/home?lang=eng
- Click on the Advanced Search option under the search box.
- Select author and enter the author's surname of the first item required in the first box, then select title and enter a keyword from the title in the second box.
4. Click on Search and find the article record in the OPAC.
5. At the article record locate the required information. Note that availability, location, tags, and other information is written down the left side of the webpage.
6. Write the answer/information required beside the question number on a sheet of paper.
7. Complete all the searches.
8. Do the "check" to see if you've found all the correct answers by following the final instructions below.
ITEM LIST Find each item and related piece of information listed below:
- The book, Run, by Linda Aksomitis. Write down the name of the illness that is tagged (a tag is a subject heading, depending what part of this catalogue you're viewing).
- The book, Racing Home, by Adele Dueck. Write down the additional format (besides print book) that this title is available in.
- The book, A Prairie Alphabet, by Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet. Write down the surname of the added author listed for this book.
- The book, Waiting for the Sun, by Alison Lohans. Write down the name of the main character who is waiting for the sun as given in the book summary.
- The book, Igloo, by Yasmine A. Cordoba. Write down the subject heading that deals with places to live.
- The book, Dust, by Arthur Slade. Write down the name of the geographic location given in the subject headings as being in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
- The book, Alexandria of Africa, by Eric Walters. Write down the name of the first library the book is listed at in the Locations.
- The book, Dinosaur Hideout, by Judith Silverthorne. Write down the location listed between Langenburg and Ituna.
You should have eight answers written in order on your sheet of paper.
Checking Your AnswersTo check your answers, do the following.
- Circle the first letter of every answer you've written down from one through eight.
- Recopy each letter out in order to form a single word with eight letters.
- If the word spells out the name of a food prepared from lean dried strips of meat pounded into paste, mixed with fat and berries, and pressed into small cakes then you've found all the right answers.
- If the letters you have don't spell out the required word, check which letters are incorrect and go back to the question that you got wrong and try again.
A library keeps a catalog of its books in the OPAC or Online Public Access Catalogue. It also keeps information about its borrowers, so it can circulate or sign out books to the people who use it. There are many different OPACs. Here's a collection of video tutorials from several libraries, so you can compare features and ways they're used.
Video #1 - Find a Book in the Library Catalog
Video #2 - University of Toronto Library
Video #3 - Brooklyn Public Library Catalog Tutorial
Video #4 - Overdrive E-Books from the Orillia Public Library
I just got back from the Association of Rural and Small libraries conference where I gave a talk about using technology to solve problems in small libraries. I had a great time and I only wish I could have stayed longer because the people at that conference, they are my people. A lot of them are in rural areas with limited or no access to broadband, they have small budgets and often untrained staff and yet they’re being told that all teenagers are “born with a chip” and that technology is moving faster than any one person can keep up with, etc. It’s daunting. Being able to know what “normal” is becomes sort of important as you have to determine what’s appropriate for your library and for your staff.
I think about this specifically in terms of our library organizations and how they determine what normal is versus what end users think is normal. Not to point the finger at ALA too much but it’s not really normal in 2008 for a website redesign to take years. It’s not really normal in 2008 to speak in allcaps when you’re emailing people as the incoming president of your organization. It’s not really normal to have a link to customer service on the main page of your website be a 404. I’m aware that it’s easy to cherrypick little pecadillos like this about an organization that does a lot of things very right. However, I do believe that one of the reasons we have trouble as a profession dealing with technology is that we don’t have an internal sense of what’s right and what’s appropriate technologically-speaking making it hard for us to make informed decisions concerning what technology to purchase or implement in the face of a lot of hype and a lot of pressure.
I’m going to work today at the Kimball Library in Randolph Vermont (I fill in there sometimes) and the librarian-facing part of the Follett OPAC interface is becoming one of my favorite slides. It looks like it was designed for a Windows 95 interface, in fact it probably was, and just never revisted. It’s 2008. People can create a blog on Tumblr that’s 100% accessible and legible and nice looking in less than two minutes. Why do I have to click a 32×32 pixel image of … a raccoon mask? to circulate books. And why can’t we agree on what usable means?
A question over on Ask MetaFilter which I don’t really know the answer to: why do so many library catalogs have human names?. It’s gotten some decent responses and I suspect there isn’t really one answer but if you have more information than the hive mind team over there, feel free to drop me a note or, if you’ve already got an account, log in and chime in.
"Why is a bicycle?" my father used to ask me. I know the answer now: "Because a vest has no sleeves." You disagree? Fine. Please write your own answer. I'm really more interested in the question, anyway. I like to collect questions. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Was Mathematics invented or discovered? (from The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio)
- Could you lie and say you love me, just a little? (Alison Krauss, "Could you Lie" from her album, Forget About It)
- If I had to wear my philosophy of life as a motto on a T-shirt, what would it be? (Editorial in Glamour, January 1997)
- Why can't I sing? (If anyone knows the answer to this one, contact me right away.)
- Are you there, God? (From Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume)
- Shall we launch again into the deep and row up the skies? (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life)
- What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:3 I love the pessimism of this book. It cheers me right up, every time.)
- Is those things arms or is they legs? (The Octopus, by Ogden Nash Did you know he has his own stamp?)
- Shouldn't I have all of this, and...? (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Passionate Kisses, from her album, Party Doll and Other Favorites)
- Surely you don't think numbers are as important as words? (from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster)
- Where else in life can spilled milk be turned into ice cream? (Katherine Paterson, on revision. I'd like THREE scoops, please.)
- Why not? (generations of children, skeptics and writers)
For more fun with questions, see:
Curiosita, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by
Michael GelbAnd if you feel like answering any of the questions above, or adding your own favorite questions in the comments, well...I say again: Why not?
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good to see you keeping everyone honest… all caps… love it!.
Hi, Jessamyn - can you tell me which link on the home page 404ed for you? The new website went live today and it took a little while for links to rectify themselves, so I want to make sure this one got resolved.
As always, we appreciate your feedback.
Thanks,
Jenny
This was on the old home page and it was the “member and customer service center” link in the old footer. I don’t even see a similar link on the new site, so maybe it’s all okay now?
I have one to add to your list of things not normal: it is not normal (nor wise) to send your members emails with their profile/account usernames and passwords in plain text. It’s even more abnormal to write back to a member who objects to this, noting that since some librarians can’t handle technology (i.e.- can’t remember their passwords), it’s OK to compromise the privacy of those who can. It is normal, or so I would assert, for those members to have finally had enough and leave the organization after dutifully supporting it for years.
Have to agree with your comments on interface design, too. It’s bad enough when a minor vendor (sorry, Follett) has bad interfaces; it’s pathetic when the vendor is large and has legion large customers who pay beaucoup maintenance. Our ILS has staff clients that literally haven’t been redesigned since the mid-1990s, and they weren’t exactly well built then.
Dale, thank you for pointing out that massive security hole! I was completely aghast a couple of months ago when I got a routine (unsolicited) membership renewal reminder from ALA that included my member-login-numerical-username-whatsis that ALA uses, and my password, right out there for God and everyone to see.
Note to ALA: your member profile database includes a “password hint” field. This might be a great time to use it, maybe?
It never occurred to me to write to ALA and object, however, partly because who exactly was I going to write to? So now I’m complaining about it on poor Jessamyn’s blog, which is about as ineffective as writing to ALA about it, but more satisfying somehow.