One of the most common areas that customers tell me they struggle with during the implementation of Talis Prism 3 is the design aspect. We have always provided a very basic design template so that each individual organisation can customise Prism 3 to their own design requirements. However this has proved challenging for some organisations who do not have the relevant in house CSS and Web Design skills to complete their design.

We have taken this feedback on board and are pleased to announce that a new default design skin is now available for those who would like this to then further build their design on. To view the default skin please visit http://prism.talis.com/trial .

If you would like this applied to your Prism 3 tenancy please contact Imraz.Mohammed@talis.com.

If you have any queries about this or any other aspect of Talis Prism 3, please contact your Account Manager or email Imraz.Mohammed@talis.com.

Keep up with the latest Talis Prism 3 news and developments on the Talis Prism 3 website and blog.

Following on from Terry’s post about the way that Highland libraries have embedded the Prism search box into their Facebook page, I was interested to see how Leeds Libaries are taking an opposite view – and using their Prism interface to surface the feed from their Facebook site.

As many libraries seek to attract new users and engage with their customers, it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to create not only a suitably branded web presence for the library catalogue, but also one that offers multiple channels to ‘speak’ to users. Currently Leeds Libraries  are parallel running their ‘old’ catalogue with the new interface, which is allowing them to fully ‘road test’ the functionality and get feedback from users as to what they want to see. 

The integration of the Facebook feed on the front page, allows for a seamless ‘news’ feature to appear on their catalogue home page, the recent information covers such diverse topics as the death of the writer Beryl Bainbridge to encouraging people to still celebrate the World Cup. This is all contained within a well designed page, making the information easy for users of the catalogue to consume.  The flexibility of the interface aids the useability of the interface, and keeps it fresh and entertaining.

Have a look here to see what you think.

As shown on the roadmap, we’re aiming to release changes to the display of availability information around the end of March. These changes are centered on making the availability information much simpler to comprehend by reducing the amount of information people have to scan over. We’re also using the opportunity to provide more information, most notably individual item barcodes so often requested by frontline staff.

So we want to add features, but reduce complexity, how are we going to manage that? In all of our design thinking for Prism 3 we are well aware that users display very different levels of comfort with computers and with Prism 3. This comes from the frequency and degree to which Prism 3 is used. At one end of the spectrum we have first-time and infrequent users and at the other daily users and staff. The regular users often spot features that could make the use of Prism 3 in a specific situation more helpful and those are often great ideas. Every feature added to a piece of software makes it more complex to use, so we are always treading the line between making Prism 3 more useful in a specific situation and making it more difficult for everyone the rest of the time. While just one small feature may not seem a big deal, and often it’s not for regular users, the build up of features over time can easily lead to an overwhelming experience for first-time and infrequent users. Prism 3 obviously has to cater for all users.

Simplifying the availability information is the key objective for us in this design and is all about making it easier for users to understand when and where they can get an item by breaking the information into bite-sized chunks. The design shown here makes it easier to scan over the information, retain that knowledge and take action on it.

This design achieves that through a number of design features – click on the images for a larger view.

Where a resource is available electronically that is often the best route to follow. Electronic resources are often available right there in the browser, without having to find a physical copy on the shelves. The first statement on availability is the electronic availability statement. In the screenshot above you’ll see a very simple sentence giving the two links where the user might get hold of an electronic copy of the resource.

Next up is a simple statement of where physical copies can be found. In the example shown the sentence is “Copies available at Brandon, Blue Anchor, Burchfield and Newington.” which is a very simple, scannable sentence. This availability statement summarises where physical copies can be found.

The statement answers the questions “Are there copies available in all libraries or no copies at all at the moment?”. For those of you that have a large number of branches we don’t intend to overwhelm these statements with long lists of branches. The design include phrases like “Available at all branches except Newington and Pootle”, “Not immediately available at any branches” and “Copies available at all branches”. These phrases, like all in Prism 3, will be customisable. These statements increase the efficiency of the page by highlighting the key information. They’re the answer you could expect if you asked a librarian.

Having said that copies are available we know you don’t want your users surprised to find reservations preventing them getting the item later in the process. To alleviate this problem, the availability statement will be followed by a clear statement that there are reservations outstanding if this is the case.

As the reader continue down the page, knowing whether copies are available or not, the next item is a clear indication that they can reserve the item they’re looking at. This has been moved from its current position and highlighted to make the functionality more accessible. We will also be adding a configurable label for reservation pricing so you will be able to indicate any charges you make for reservations.

The key information; electronic and physical availability, reservations and how to reserve is all available before we get down to more specific detail. For those wanting more specific detail we sort this first by branch

The use of simple statements continues here at branch level, a simple statement of how many copies are available, or when the earliest copy is due back if none are available. For those users in the library building we’ve also pulled the shelfmarks up into this statement, making it easier to see where to go next to find a copy. The branch names will be sorted alphabetically as this is the easiest way for a user to find a branch when scanning over the information.

By this point the majority of users have all the information they need to find a copy on the shelves in whichever branch they’re using. This is the objective we had for serving those first-time and infrequent users.

As we said at the start, though, we recognise that there are times when we need to add more detail for staff and expert users. Here we’re providing item level detail. To prevent information overload for the infrequent users this is hidden behind a single click of the branch name.

If you want to see all of the items in all of your branches, you’ll notice a discreet ‘expand all’ link at the bottom right corner of the table. Clicking this will expand all of the branches down to item level detail.

No design for availability would be complete without serious consideration for serials. The example above indicates the case for most items, but the useful data for serials is different. For serials the key information are the holdings, missings and notes. The new design for availability will display different data when working with availability for serials, showing this key information.

This design is a great improvement over the current display of availability and we’ll be doing the work to implement it shortly. As with all other aspects of Prism 3 what we’re showing here is the default, and deliberately plain, styling. You will be able to change the styling of these new features as you see fit to work with your own themes.

If you would like to talk to us about this more then comment below, email Alison Kershaw, talk to your account manager or come along to the next Talis Prism 3 Development Update Webinar on 8th March.

The University of Chichester are now live with their new catalogue, parallel running both Prism 2 and Prism 3 for a few weeks before moving to Prism 3 as the default catalogue. This gives staff and students alike a great opportunity to try out the new OPAC as the project team in charge of the implementation at the University were keen to allow staff and students to migrate to the new service naturally.

Prism 3 has been created to make the design of the user interface extremely flexible and the project team have created the design to fit in seamlessly with the branding of the University. The team were also able to link other useful information into the header such as library opening hours and location information.

The University have aso blogged about the release, at English Liblog@chi here.

Firstly, many thanks to everyone who attended the recent webinar to discuss single sign-on with Talis Keystone and Talis Prism 3; the information and feedback you provided us was very useful in directing our plans in this area.

To summarise the information you gave us – many of you have integrated your portals and VLE’s with Talis Keystone to deliver a joined-up experience for students in their working dashboards, with the Library Management System. The Portal integration module of Talis Keystone allows you to embed a link into the portal or VLE enabling the authenticated user to click through from the portal system directly into the Talis Prism 2 catalogue, already signed into their borrower account and therefore negating the need for them to be challenged for library credentials. This is a huge benefit of Talis Keystone and something that you would like to continue with in Talis Prism 3.

Since the webinar we have taken the time to analyse a design which will enable this functionality in Talis Prism 3 without any impact on the integrated solution that you have already invested in developing in your portals and VLE’s and so the transition of this functionality will be seamless and fully managed by Talis Consulting and will have no impact on any of your live services. We have designed the approach to minimise any demand on you and at this point we do not expect any changes to be required for a standard portal or VLE integration.

During January 2010 we plan to rollout the required functionality in Talis Prism 3 and the Local Data Services component deployed on your library system which is needed to enable this transition. Following these software releases we will be able to make a configuration change in your Talis Keystone environment so that the Single Sign-On link which is delivered from the web services, to the portal, is enabled for Talis Prism 3. The timing of this switch over from single sign-on to Talis Prism 2, to Talis Prism 3 will be configurable, and will be done at a time of your choosing.

We are enabling this functionality in response to your feedback, as a solution to your immediate requirements. It is not however a replacement for the longer term single sign-on theme we plan to address in June-August of 2010 as published on our Talis Prism 3 roadmap. This theme of work is to take a fresh look at the area of authentication and single sign-on with other institutional-wide systems you will already have in place, such as Athens and Shibboleth.

As an update to the above posting we would like to make it explicit that in order to make the transition of moving from single sign-on to Talis Prism 2 over to single sign-on to Talis Prism 3, so that you do not need to make any portal changes and all work can be done by Talis in configuration:  you will not have single sign-on into Talis Prism 2 following the change, all requests to the borrower account from the portal will now go to Talis Prism 3, even if you are running both in parallel for catalogue searching and browsing.

Last week we heard that the University of Derby have chosen to ‘soft launch’ their Prism 3 OPAC,  in a similar way to the University of Sunderland have (see Terry’s post).  University of Derby have used the Talis Design service to create a look and feel that ties in strongly with the rest of the University’s corporate image. The seamless transition that the person searching receives when moving from the catalogue home page to the contact page, or the University of Derby electronic library page will ensure that the experience of the student is one of a joined up institution. We are waiting to hear what the students from both Sunderland and Derby make of the new version of the catalogue with interest as the development of the service continues with regular releases and enhancements to features.

Over the past few months, we have seen ten customers now promote their versions of Prism 3 to live, either as the sole catalogue for their users or in parallel  with their existing Prism 2 interfaces.  As we hoped, we have a number of flavours of Prism 3, from interfaces like Derby’s to Southwark Councils and also dual language options like Conwy County Borough Council’s.  We have also seen some press attention for these interfaces, with the Library and Information Gazette using the Royal Scottish Academy of Drama‘s Prism 3 on their front cover of a recent issue.

This means that Talis Prism is now being used ‘live’ at a total of 10 institutions, enhancing the experience that those searching the library catalogue by combining innovative design with features such as book jacket images and faceted searching. These 10 libraries will shortly be followed by the other 25 that are currently implementing and we look forward to seeing what flavours of catalogue they will bring, and the others that follow on after them.

One of the things I’ve been asked about most over the past few weeks is Juice, and by implication, extending Talis Prism 3. Let me try to explain…

One of the principles underpinning Talis Prism 3 is its ability to grow and do new stuff. There’s a lot we’re doing under the hood to allow us to add new features in our regular releases, but we also want you to be able to play too. We want your web development teams to add cool new features for your institution and to share those with each other.

To do that, we’ve made it so that you can add your own JavaScript to Talis Prism 3 pages, extending them with new features and integrating them with other systems you have.

Using simple JavaScript extensions you could add in Google Maps showing where your branches are. You could bring pricing information from Amazon into your pages, or reviews from LibraryThing. Maybe you’d like to include a floormap of where to find a book in the shelves or embed videos from Meet the Author.

All of these things are possible by adding your own JavaScript extensions to Talis Prism 3.

Of course, most of the things people want to do when extending Talis Prism 3 have things in common. You want to get some information out of the page, do something with it (like query Amazon) and then put something back into the page for the user. That’s where your developers might
find Juice useful.

Juice is not a product and is not part of Talis Prism 3. Juice stands for Javascript User Interface Componentised Extensions. It’s an open-source project started by Richard Wallis to help people extend web-based applications more easily. You can use it to extend any web app where you can add some JavaScript in. Conversely you can extend Talis Prism 3 without using Juice.

Juice has been designed to make it easier to extract information from a page, query other services with that info and then add more information back into the page for the user to work with. As that’s what many extensions will want to do, Talis Prism 3 and Juice make a great combination.

As Talis Prism 3 continues to develop we’ll be adding in more features to allow you to extend it. RSS feeds of searches and a full Linked Data API to get at your catalogue data in other applications are both planned.

If you have ideas on extending Talis Prism 3 for yourselves and want some help, give Richard a shout. He’s always looking out for new ideas and to help people make them real.

I wonder how many of you saw the recent popularity list of most visited libraries?  As with any list this is subjective, but the main point of the MLA report was two fold, firstly that Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library had more visitors and lent more books than any other in 2007/08. Closely followed by libraries in major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Croydon.

However the second part of the report was also interesting; as the BBC states (after the doom and gloom about the number of physical visits being down overall)

“But the number of people accessing library services via the internet, for services including book renewals and catalogue inquiries, was up by 20%, with more than 76 million web visits.”

This isn’t surprising news, the way in which people access services has changed to being online as a first port of call. So, with 76 million web visits how are you going to make sure that users keep returning to renew items, or see what you have in your catalogue? At Talis we have prepared for this by ensuring that the next generation OPAC can have an attractive interface, and also that the search can be accessed from anywhere. Its by having an attractive, modern and intuitive interface to your web presence that will keep your users coming back and also attract new ones.

Please see Richard’s post below for details of how to do this.

 Today saw the first Prism day to look at the new Prism and to see and hear from those at Talis talk about the new architecture behind it, the design aspects of the new interface, and how it can be extended.

Thirteen representatives of customers joined us at the Talis Birmingham offices.  As the first of these events it was very much a two way event, with Talis staff learning as much about how Prism is to be used and received, as customers understanding the things to be considered for a new Prism implementation.

Set in the context of the development of a whole new architecture and product fit to support and enable the needs of a discovery application with a ten year lifespan, the primary consideration is planning.  The implementation of Prism is a project, probably extending over several months, which requires engagement from the start of the library, IT, web teams and designers, and from the Talis  consultancy team.

Dave Robinson & Chris Waring from the Talis design team showed several stunning designs that have already been applied to some early adopter prism tenancies.  They also showed the Broadminster demonstration tenancy interface, which sported an animated book jacket carousel.  These they used to show how the designs where evolved and what some of the possibilities are.

Towards the end of the day I had an opportunity to demonstrate some work I have being doing on how other services, such as Google Book Search and screen reader technology can be added to the Prism interface.  Also on show for the first time was the Prism area of the Talis Developer Wiki, where the community of Prism users and developers will be able to share these experiences, code, and documentation for Prism extensions.

From feedback at the end of the day, it was clear that many had found it very useful.  A great start and I encourage all who are contemplating moving to the new version of Prism to sign up for and attend one of the other scheduled days.

Whilst discussing the way libraries will want to change, over the lifetime of the product,  the way their particular Prism tenancy looks, feels and behaves, it became clear to me that there are several subtly different processes that could be involved that are often lumped together under the heading of customisation or configuration.

Although only subtly different on the surface these activities attract different skill sets and levels in their implementation. 

This post is an attempt to clarify some of the language that will increasingly be used as Prism tenancies are rolled-out.

• Design – the process of establishing the look of your Prism Tenancy.  Defining the fonts, colours, graphics, layouts, and links to give your Prism interface a stunning look that , dependant on your requirements, either fits in with, complements, or even contrasts with the other online styles of your organisation.  This process will inevitably involve web design people from your organisation and/or ourselves.
• Configure – this is the process we are all used to. Switching on and off capabilities, deciding how many facets to display, which elements can be used to sort results, etc. The normal system manager style tasks that are required from time to time.
• Customise – the process of changing the way the core functionality of your Prism tenancy is delivered to those that use it.  This would entail the use of APIs that underpin the product, heavily customising the html used in the display, or even modifying some of the underlying code.   Obviously anyone involved in this will need significant skills in html, JavaScript, web based APIs and other similar technologies.
• Extend – Integrating links to external functionality to add the user experience.  This could be for instance a window enabling users to buy books from Amazon, or links to videos recorded by authors, or enabling a text to speech service that talks the pages to your users, or links to the full contents of books held at Google – the list is endless.  The way that you would implement these extensions would obviously differ but in general you would copy a few lines of html or JavaScript in to the tenancy’s configuration file for say the header or footer element of the pages.    These examples could then be shared between the community of Prism customers, via forums or a development environment such as a wiki.  All others, wishing to use the same extension, would need to be able to do is to paste the code in to their tenancy to test it.  The skill set required here would probably be simple html and  awareness of how to access the tenancy configuration files.

These are general descriptions of what could be involved, not all of which any customer would need to consider – especially in the early stages of moving to a Prism tenancy.  Some may never progress beyond the design and configuration stages.  Others may find over time that their efforts to extend Prism may become popular and well used by others in the Prism community that they share them with.

We are currently in the early stages of the implementation of Prism, so the ability to extend or customise a tenancy is something that is yet to be readily available.  It may be some time before the ability to fully customise becomes an option. As part of the upcoming Prism Days we will be demonstrating the type of extensions that will be possible and discussing how this will evolve.

Hopefully the explanation of some of this terminology will help as Prism, its architecture and the way it is to develop is discussed in coming months.

I would be greatly interested to hear if these descriptions are indeed helpful.