Prism Release, 21 July 2009
Today’s release includes more textual improvements to the Welsh language interface, and increased stability of user sessions, as described when we announced its preview.
Customers with Talis Prism 3 have been able to preview this change against their own catalogues, and the release now makes it live for all of them.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I realise that this sounds like a very old-fashioned enquiry, but bear with me.
Are there any plans, even in the distant future, to provide a subject index facility in Prism?
What I’m thinking of, in the loosest sense, is a connection between the classification (and I’m assuming that a lot of libraries do still use classification as a means of subject access and not just as a means to a shelfmark) and the words that people use when searching for a subject? It doesn’t matter how that connection is presented – whether as an old-fashioned subject index leading into the classified catalogue, or a tag cloud – but it would be nice to have some sort of a connection between language and classmark.
Keyword search is all fine and dandy (but we all know its limitations); and offering “other books on this subject” is a help as well, but doesn’t really provide the clear array of linked subjects that a good old-fashioned subject index with its cross-references etc can offer.
We put a lot of effort into both classification and subject-indexing and I want to release the value of that effort through the catalogue. How best to do it, that’s the question!
August 13th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Thanks for your comment Heather, it’s great to get feedback.
On the Talis Prism 3 Microsite you can find the Talis Prism 3 Roadmap. The Roadmap details the themes that we are looking to focus development effort on during specified periods over the next 12 months. A theme is a period where we plan to review a broad area of Talis Prism 3, addressing both customer-identified functionality and work that we need to cover so as to ensure that the service continues to meet your needs over coming years.
There are two themes on the Roadmap where we plan to cover the points you raise about Subject Index data: ‘Semantic Data Model’ and ‘Discovery Features’.
The ‘Semantic Data Model’ theme will focus on making it easier to explore the library catalogue and to underpin future search improvements we will be making substantial changes to the way Prism works with bibliographic data. During this work we’ll be looking at copy level data, authority data and aspects of indexing and display.
Once the ‘Semantic Data Model’ theme is complete we will be able to embark on the ‘Discovery Features’ theme. Because we will have identifiers for more than just items we will be able to provide meaningful pages for authors, subjects and other entities. This will make it easier to explore the bibliographic data as well as enhancing your catalogues standing in search engines.
To ensure that you keep up to date with Talis Prism 3 developments, we are running monthly webinars where we discuss the latest developments, if you would like to register for the next webinar on 9th September, then please register your interest by sending an email to Alison Kershaw.
If in the meantime you have any further questions, then please let me know.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Hello, Alison – Thanks for this clarification. I appreciate that you can’t be specific about the path development will follow until you’ve started on it; my problem is that I have to make decisions about how to spend always-diminishing resources. On the one hand, I don’t want to waste time polishing a tool that will be superseded; on the other, I can’t afford to let the user experience suffer because I am counting on something that isn’t going to materialise. Oh well, ’twas ever thus!
We will be keeping an eye on the webinars!
Heather