Encore at the University of Glasgow

Karen StevensonJIBS Workshop13th November 2008

Presentation outline

• Setting the scene c.2006• Encore - now• User feedback• Encore - next

Context: 2006

• In-house development- quick polls, search forms,

enhanced WebOPAC

• Commercial development- proposal from Innovative Interfaces

Glasgow’s Encore timeline

• Sept 2006: development partner• April 2007: Encore server installed• July 2007: in-house previews• Feb 2008: publicly available

System admin

• Encore has its own server• Interfaces with LMS server • Data updates required for non-

Millennium systems• AJAX technology

Encore basics

• Single search box• Keyword search of the catalogue• Relevance ranked results • Options to refine results (facets)• Results set highlights• Tag cloud of subject headings

Encore ‘extras’

• Community features • Related subscription resources • Federated searching • Context sensitive links• Harvesting

Place the search box wherever convenient for users

Relevance ranked results – item detailsFacets Value added

Higher relevance weighting for journal records

Electronic links expanded by default

Search found in: Popular with academics

Limits can be applied or removed in any order

Glasgow coding changes

• Formats (material types)- increased from 10 to 24

• Collections (scopes)- increased from 4 to 12

• Locations

Recently Added, or Popular Choices

Optional images from Yahoo!

Subject tag cloud- popular with all user groups

Full record display

Spellcheck/did you mean?

What the users liked

• search box on first page• that anything can be typed in and it just

searches• did not matter if you wrote in author or

title, you got suggestions• nice layout and info breakdown• really easy to see where everything is• sidebar categories• spell checker

What the users didn’t like

• how to export records• being timed out• tag searching didn’t work as

thought• too simple for serious academic

research

Next up for Encore at Glasgow

• Federated searching• Community tagging• Harvesting

Federated search – initial results

Login - Authentication

Harvesting

• Institutional repository • Manuscripts• Archival material

Watch this space!

http://www.gla.ac.uk/library