Outside these four walls: bringing online library resources and services to users

February 2, 2006

Summary: Emily Horning, Julie Linden, Karen Reardon, Judy Spak, and Kalee Sprague briefly discuss the work of the Portal Opportunities Group. They highlight the importance of embedding online Library resources and services in the diverse environ ments where readers and researchers conduct their daily intellectual lives, including university portals, course management systems, RSS feeds, and hand-held devices like PDAs.

Click here for the audio file.

Notes

Kalee Sprague

POG website.
YaleInfo, Yale University's uPortal implementation.

uPortal "books out" channel showing live patron data from the Voyager LMS.

Karen Reardon
A brief introduction to RSS -- "Really Simply Syndication"
Compare news on library front door and Social Science Library web page.

Emily Horning

The librarian role allows integration of library services into course management systems.

A sample course in Yale's Sakai implementation, classes v.2

Julie Linden

Libraries can use syndication, like RSS, to push out information they already produce, making it more useful to patrons. Here, the National University of Ireland library makes new book lists available via an RSS feed.

The library uses the feed to display a constant stream of new books on its homepage.

Subject specific feeds are also availalbe, shown here on one of the library's subject pages.

Patrons can also view the lists in the RSS reader or "aggregator" of their choice, here Bloglines.

Judy Spak

University of Michigan Library has created RSS feeds for each course that has reserve materials in the library. The library staff worked with the registrar to automate the process. The RSS feed is then displayed within the Sakai-based Course Management System, called CTools.

A sample course in Michigan's Sakai implementation, showing the course's reserve materials, with links into the library's Aleph LMS.

Handheld devices -- PDAs and cell phones -- can be used to access library online catalogs. This is made easier if the catalog has a "slimmed down" version specifically for handheld devices. The Yale Law Library's Innovative Interfaces LMS has a feature called AirPAC that makes access from handheld devices easier.
These simplified interfaces can also be used, with some tweaking, as portal channels. To see mini-MORRIS in the Google portal, add the content "http://www.misinformed.info/morris.xml".