Comments on: A Random Assortment of Assorted Randomness http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/09/13/a-random-assortment-of-assorted-randomness/ or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:15:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Elizabeth Thomsen http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/09/13/a-random-assortment-of-assorted-randomness/#comment-3809 Elizabeth Thomsen Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:13:10 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=2502#comment-3809 About the Amazon thing of linking from one format/edition to another, Mike Rylander, one of the developers, has talked about this. Here’s a quote from an e-mail message last year: “We want to extend the use of metarecords in several places…[including] links from record detail pages to other records within a metarecord…” so I would say there’s hope for that.

There are definitely a few pitfalls at the moment, mostly related to specific formats (or, more accurately, insufficiently specific formats) but that just means there’s a little more work to do!

]]> By: Brian Herzog http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/09/13/a-random-assortment-of-assorted-randomness/#comment-3783 Brian Herzog Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:26:58 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=2502#comment-3783 @John: thanks for the suggestion – I’ll check it out.

@Elizabeth: I’ve been following your thread on the open-ils-general listserv, and it’s been enlightening. I remember that feature being discussed pre-launch, but had totally forgotten about it and haven’t used it once. I’ll make a point of trying it out, but it seems as if there are still a few pitfalls. I love the theory though – I wish all catalogs worked that way by default. Amazon makes it really easy with their little format table on each record – I don’t know why libraries can’t do the same thing.

]]> By: Elizabeth Thomsen http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/09/13/a-random-assortment-of-assorted-randomness/#comment-3774 Elizabeth Thomsen Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:49:42 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=2502#comment-3774 Hi, Brian — On the Xtranormal video about just wanting to read a copy of any edition of a book, I really like Evergreen’s metarecord system. You can turn on “Group Formats and Editions” in the catalog, and it collapses matching records into a single entry that you can place a hold on. I placed a hold on “Little Dorrit” that way on the MVLC catalog, limited to books, and saved myself the trouble of choosing from among 20 different identical (for my purposes) editions. You can also turn this on under the advanced options when you’re placing a regular hold to expand it to all editions (or all books or whatever.) It’s not perfect, and it would be better if the formats were more specific (especially with media.) But just as a patron, I am finding it really helpful!

]]> By: John McGraw http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/09/13/a-random-assortment-of-assorted-randomness/#comment-3772 John McGraw Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:56:46 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=2502#comment-3772 Re: GOOMHR, I’ve been happy with yousendit for ever and ever. Most of the questionable music-selection processes I have involve Rapidshare, Zshare, Multiupload, etc. and I agree there is much that is sketchy in their UX.
But any of them sure beat the hell out of busting up digital files on usenet, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

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