If you're interested, here's some more information from Betsy about the e-journal links in MNCAT and the MarcIt load:
SFX people in the various areas are notified about when a MarcIt load is going to take place - Nicole gets the notice at Bio-Med.
MARCit is a service we buy from SFX/ExLibris in order to bring our e-journals into the catalog. We export our active titles from our SFX instance, as well as the titles from the other campus instances. The titles are sent to SFX and they return to us files of records. We have to do fresh exports each time because of the multiple instance situation, which means we have to overlay records in the system. There are 4 points in the process that cause reindexing (so the records disappear for a couple of minutes each time): record overlay, holdings replacement and then the appending of the 856/866 on the holdings, and the deletion of the 856/866 from the bib records.
We would actually like to be able to do this every couple of weeks, so that the catalog stays more current. We will not do this until we can perfect and shorten our loading method. We'd also like to be able to do the whole load at night, but that may be a while.
The A-Z list (e-journal) database is the most current record of our e-holdings.
Liz
Links to e-journals are now available in MNCAT again. A reminder - the e-journals database is the most up-to-date, so always check there if you're not finding an e-journal in MNCAT.
Nicole sent me some further explanation about the e-journals/MNCAT situation:
"Betsy is in the process of loading E-journal records from SFX into Aleph (these are the MarcIt records). This whole process requires her to strip out the "old" MarcIt records and then replace them with the new ones. This process should happen monthly, but does not always. It does take a while for these records to appear in MNCAT as Janet explained - I hope for Bio-Med that everything is up and running by the end of today, but in the past it has taken longer."
So, if you ever encounter the situation again, that's what's happening.
Liz
This morning we had a call from a patron looking for e-journals using the Journals catalog in MNCAT. She was looking up a journal she knew we had electronic access to (American Journal of Epidemiology). However, the MNCAT record listed the paper holding but did not have the link for the e-journal. We tried with a few other journal titles, using both the full MNCAT and the Journals catalog, and the same thing happened - paper holdings but no e-journal link.
I called Janet Arth, and she said that phenomenon is caused by the monthly Aleph update - something about a process that deletes the current links and puts in new ones, so we happened to catch it between those two steps. It's now almost 4 hours since we first noticed this situation and there are still no e-journal links, but apparently this is normal.
You can still access the e-journals by using the e-journals database, even when the links don't appear in MNCAT. So, if you go into MNCAT and notice that all the e-journal links are gone, don't panic - use the e-journals database, and the links will be back in MNCAT soon.
Let me know if you have questions. Thanks!
Liz
I saw a commercial this weekend for Ask.com, in which a guy was talking about Ask.com and saying "librarians love us." Since the man on TV claims we love them, I figured I should check it out.
I played around with it a bit, and it's actually pretty cool. Early things that I like:
1. Ways to narrow or broaden your search by subject (links grouped on the side) - this is like what EBSCO is doing with their databases now. It's a neat way to discover new information and go off in different directions.
2. "Preview" binoculars for many sites, where you can hover over the binoculars and see the site it's linking to without actually going there.
3. Lots of integrated tools, like images, news, shopping, conversion, etc. - sound like any other search engine we know?
4. Nice clean interface, a la Google.
5. You can save selected search results - like a clipboard for websites that you find. You can set up an account to save permanently, tag results, etc. Very cool.
6. Has a kids version too.
7. I didn't do a lot of search comparisons yet, but the few I did were fairly comparable. Google seemed better but Ask.com's added value makes it a contender.
8. Maps feature - it will animate your route for you, tell you how long it will take you to walk, etc. Neat!
Things I didn't like so far:
1. There are sponsored links at the top and bottom and they're not set off well, so you have to look carefully to see that they're ads.
Anyway, it's pretty slick. You should check it out, so that if someone asks you if it's true that you love it (like the man on the TV said) you can give an informed answer one way or the other. It has a nice "about" section that gives a good overview.
Here's a link to an article about the ad campaign, or read it in the extended entry section.
Enjoy!
Liz
Ask.com Launches Second Post-Jeeves Campaign
› › › ClickZ News
By Kevin Newcomb | May 3, 2006
After showing the power of Ask.com's tools to civilize wild primates, the butler-less search engine will launch a second wave of TV ads today showcasing one of the company's top scientists.
Known as "AG" to his team, Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive VP of search technology, is one of the main developers of the Ask.com technology and a champion of improving the user experience of Ask.com, according to Greg Ott, Ask.com's VP marketing.
"Apostolos brings the true Ask brand forward. His passion as one of the site's creators really comes through on camera," Ott told ClickZ News.
Ask.com is investing heavily in marketing this year in a bid to gain market share from the dominant players Google and Yahoo! The latest report from comScore Media Metrix found Google accounted for 41 percent of search queries in January 2006, followed by Yahoo at 29 percent, MSN at 14 percent, and Ask.com at 5.6 percent.
Gerasoulis, a former professor at Rutgers University, stars in the latest set of :30 and :60 spots, created by Berlin Cameron New York. He was asked to use Ask.com to find out about various pop culture references that he was not familiar with, such as hip-hop culture, reggaeton, or cooking, and then to explain what he found while the film rolled.
In one, Gerasoulis shows how a search for "pimped out cars" can lead to useful information about custom rims and find sites that use related slang terms like "tight" or "phat" as well.
"Search engines understand text. Ask.com understands concepts," he says in his heavy Greek accent. "Pimped out cars are related; tight cars are related. Ask.com is a 'pimped out search engine'; it is very tight," he says.
In another, Gerasoulis explains that librarians have always been drawn to Ask.com for the way it groups information. "If librarians love us, I think the world should love us too," he says.
The sessions led to the creation of several :30 and :60 spots, which will be rotated into the plan over coming weeks. The ads will replace the current ads in the media buys made for the "Use Tools. Feel Human." campaign. Those ads, created by TBWA Chiat Day, have been running since early March, when the Ask.com redesign was unveiled.
The reason for splitting creative duties between agencies was a matter of speed, Ott said. "You have to be fast moving in this industry. We wanted to have multiple projects running in parallel," he said.
TV buys include network prime, early morning and cable placements. Online creative will not change, but will continue to stress the unique features of the site without reusing themes from the TV campaign, he said.
During parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp's quarterly investor call yesterday, IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said that early marketing returns from the "Use Tools. Feel Human." campaign were very positive, with up to 30-percent increases in daily query volume common in April.
Ott said the current campaign has delivered "tremendous" results, with increases in top of mind awareness and consideration, as well as usage and unique users.
"Best of all, it's helping to drive users to what makes Ask unique and better: the tools we have that help people get what they're searching for faster," Ott said. "We're building on that momentum with the new campaign."
Hello All,
As I was checking out the following (see below) I can across the listing of video cast out of the NIH on a wide variety of topics. Take a look when you get a chance, you may want to link to come on your courselib, pagescribe pages or in other resources.
http://videocast.nih.gov/default.asp
This year’s lecture is particularly poignant due to the death of Joseph Leiter on May 27, 2005. He was a major contributor in cancer research at the National Cancer Institute and then a leader at NLM as a champion of medical librarians and an informatics pioneer. Through this annual lecturership named in recognition of his excellence, his memory and spirit will remain alive.
2006 Joseph Leiter Lecture - May 10, 2006 - 1:30 3:00 pm
Lister Hill Auditorium/ Building 38A - National Library of Medicine/NIH - Bethesda, MD