Prism Blog

Prism Release Preview – July 2011

We’re pleased to announce that the latest version of Prism has been released for everyone to preview; this release has the following changes:

Improved display of formats in initial results display for Semantic Data Model records

The Semantic Data Model title work, launched last month, makes some changes to the way we extract data from the 245 field; part of this was dropping subfield $h from the display in favour of more descriptive terms found elsewhere in a record. We’ve tweaked the search results page, as originally discussed on the blog a few weeks ago, to draw more attention to the format by making it bold and displaying the most specific term, e.g. “eBook” rather than “Book, eBook, Eletronic Resource”. The end result is a more consistent experience – borrowers only need to look in a single place as they scan the page and the terminology used is the same from record to record. We’ve made  a few other tweaks to the appearance of this page to make the layout more consistent as well. As with other Semantic Data Model features, you’ll need to be on the new version of marcgrab to see these changes.

The revised format display

Support for Audio Visual (non-ISBN) cover images

To support the upcoming switch to BDS for Prism enrichments, we’ve enabled cover images for non-ISBN records; this will show, subject to coverage, images for records that have an EAN or UPC catalogued in the 024 field. These images will start displaying once we complete the transition in the coming weeks and we’ll put out a notice when this happens. Customers with Syndetics enrichments can also benefit from this development; please raise a service request and we will make the required configuration changes to your tenancy.

Addition of two new theme fragments

A common request we receive is for more control over the “My Account” login page, so we’ve added a new theme fragment which allows you to insert content in the same way as the homepage and header fragments. We’re releasing a small update to the Admin Console early this week which will pick up a file named “login.html” that you upload to your theme and insert it into your tenancy.

Another page we’re enabling further customisation of is the no results screen. Uploading a file called “noresults.html” to your tenancy theme will include it below the existing content. This fragment is treated a bit differently to others as it allows you to access the search query and insert it into your custom content, for example in a link to another search system such as Copac, the British Library or Google Books. As with the login fragment, this also relies on the Admin Console release this week.

No results fragment linking to Copac, The British Library and Google Books

No results fragment linking to Copac, The British Library and Google Books

Taking advantage of this new functionality is easy, just insert the following snippet anywhere in the fragment:

{{ query }}

If you’d like to provide links to prepared searches on other discovery interfaces you’ll need to change that slightly and “url encode” it; this makes sure it’s properly formatted for use in a hyperlink:

{{ query|url_encode }}

The full example in the screenshot above is:

<p>You can also try your search for "{{ query }}" on some other catalogues:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://copac.ac.uk/search?&any={{ query|url_encode }}">Search for "{{ query }}" on COPAC</a></li>
<li><a href="http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?mode=Basic&vid=BLVU1&vl(freeText0)={{ query|url_encode }}&fn=search&tab=local_tab&">Search for "{{ query }}" on the British Library OPAC</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q={{ query|url_encode }}">Search for "{{ query }}" on Google Books</a>
</ul>

We’re planning on releasing these changes to the live service within the next week, so would really appreciate everyone trying these new features on their tenancy. As usual, you can preview this release by prepending your tenancy name with “demo/”, for example:

http://prism.talis.com/demo/manchester-ac/

or

http://prism.talis.com/demo/southwark/

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch; you can comment here, on the forums and Prism Ideas or contact your account manager or the Prism team directly.

Prism webinar: Enhanced Enrichments through Prism

Following the announcement of our deal with BDS to extend and enhance enrichments in Prism, we will be holding a webinar to discuss this further. In the webinar we will provide an overview of the new data available, explain how you can get the data, and will be available to answer any questions that you have. Find out more, and register your free place, on our Prism Events page.

Votes for Prism Ideas

The enthusiastic use made of the Prism Ideas forum by a large proportion of Prism customers is very encouraging and it is proving valuable as  guide to priorities for development. This enthusiasm has also been manifested in feedback on the forum itself, primarily asking for more votes to make it easier to add more ideas. You need a spare vote to be able to add an idea and temporarily borrowing a vote from another idea is a cumbersome process. More votes may also give further discrimination amongst the most popular ideas.

In the light of this feedback and having reviewed the effect of twenty votes in the Alto forum, we have today increased the number of votes that a user can cast in the Prism Ideas forum to twenty.

To date, fifty-eight ideas have been submitted to the Prism forum. We’ve completed eight ideas and another seven are either planned or work has started. When an idea is completed, the votes are returned for re-use.

Fifty-three customers have registered for Prism Ideas and forty-nine have voted. That’s out of fifty-four customers who are live with Prism and around another ten preparing to go live.

We’re spending at least twenty percent of each development period on ideas from the forum, and we’re looking forward to seeing more ideas and clearer trends from the increase in votes.

Watch the latest Talis Prism Development webinar

If you were unable to attend one of our recent Prism 3 update webinars, then catch up on latest developments by watching the recording below or by downloading the video.

Agenda

  • Introductions
  • Roadmap
  • General update
    • Latest release
      • Add to list
      • Export to citation tools
      • Classmark searching (class:””)
      • More SDM work (title and identifiers)
      • Choice of jacket supplier
    • Upcoming plans
      • Date ranges
      • Search results page
      • Augmented discovery
      • Mobile theme
    • Design documentation
    • MarcGrab/LDS rollout

[podcast format=”video”]http://talis-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/prism_webinar_040711.mp4[/podcast]

Identifying the format in search results

The latest release of Prism, when supplied with data from the new MarcGrab, re-models title and statement of responsibility information from MARC field 245, analysing the different kinds of data that MARC often lumps together, to make better use of it. One benefit of this is that any number-and-name-of-part information embedded in subfield $c (statement of responsibility, etc) is now appended to the main title so that you can see all of the precise title information together. Another benefit is the display of the statement of responsibility.

Historically, a General Material Designator (GMD) has been added to title information to give some indication of the kind of material of the item. However, its general nature has always been unsatisfactory because users want more precise information, and this is why, in the new cataloguing rules, RDA, the GMD is dropped in favour of more specific alternatives. For these reasons we have omitted the GMD.

A better alternative to the GMD is accurate format information, presented so the user can see at a glance what it is. The format is already in a regular position at the beginning of a line, but to improve its display we’re proposing the following changes:

  • Move the summary snippet to the foot of the entry
  • Select the most specific format term, where more than one is currently given, according to a preference list. For example, select ‘eBook’ from ‘Electronic resource, eBook, Book’
  • Display the selected format in bold
  • Place the edition statement and the year of publication, in that order, after the language, to give more prominence to these important elements
  • Change the label ‘Published’ to ‘Publisher’ and unbold it by default, so that it does not distract attention from the earlier elements.

It is posible to hide the language and publisher elements with styling tools (a simple update to you site.css file). It is also possible to hide just the default language, that is, the language of your catalogue, usually ‘English’. For details of how to apply these changes, or to request us to do it for you, please raise a Support case.

This proposal is only about results entries, not the Item Detail page. There are other issues and ideas for the Item Detail page, which will be addressed later.

We’ve put together some examples. Please click on the image to get a full size view. Cover images have been omitted from the examples but they would be there, as now, in the implementation.

We’d love to hear your views on this proposal. Please comment on this blog post, or you can email me terry.willan@capita.co.uk. As soon as a favourable consensus is clear we’ll start work on this with a view to getting it into the next release of Prism.

Information Beautifully Presented – more enrichments to be available in Prism

Following a review of the data suppliers earlier this year, a new deal has been agreed with BDS to provide Prism users with extended enrichments. This will mean that Prism will provide the experience that library users have come to expect from today’s digital environment.

The deal will provide a broader range of enrichments as part of the standard Prism offering. These extended enrichments include jacket cover images for books and AV, tables of contents, track listings and long descriptions for books and AV.

As part of a Prism release later this year, searching the library catalogue through Prism will produce results where the keyword is contained within the enrichments. For example, searching for a song will return CDs which contain the searched song.

The jacket cover images will be available for books and AV shortly. We will let you know when the other enrichments become available in Prism. For more information please contact your Account Manager or libraries-sales@capita.co.uk.

Disabling export to citation tools in Prism

The new feature to export to citation tools should be useful to researchers in all types of library, without hindering anyone who doesn’t want to use it.

However, if it is felt that it would not be relevant to any users of your library service, it can be suppressed. If you wish to do so, please raise a Support case.

Prism Release – 21 June 2011

I’m pleased to announce that the latest version of Prism has now been released to the live service. It has been available for preview since 27th May.

New features in this release include the ability to create lists of items and to export information to reference management tools such as Endnote, RefWorks and Zotero.

Other features in this release and in the previous release, including Loan History, will become active when you get the new Local Data Services and MarcGrab. A roll out programme to deploy these on request has begun.

For more detail about this Prism release, please see the  preview release notice.

If you have any questions about this release you can comment on this blog, or contact me terry.willan@capita.co.uk or contact your Account Manager.

Prism 3: Development Update Webinar

To keep up to date with the latest Prism 3 Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 4th July 2011 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

This webinar will focus again on discussing the latest Prism 3 developments referring to the Prism 3 Roadmap, while providing an opportunity for you to raise any specific questions that you may have.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism 3 news and developments on the Prism 3 website and blog.

Prism Release Preview – 27 May 2011

It’s great to find what you need in the library catalogue, but it is also important to have services and tools to do useful things with the catalogue data. So I’m happy to announce that the ability to export records to reference management tools and the ability to save records in lists are both features of the latest release of Prism, now available for preview.

The export feature allows you to export to Endnote and RefWorks as well as to export in RIS format, which can be imported automatically by tools such as Reference Manager and Zotero. You can export individual records from either the search results page or the item detail page, and you can also export the contents of a saved list. When in a list, you can also export the data as a comma separated file (csv).

The lists feature allows you to create temporary lists as an anonymous guest user when you’re not signed in to your account, and to create permanent lists when you are signed in. A temporary list automatically becomes a permanent one when you sign in. You can save individual items to a list from either the results page or the item detail page and either add them to an existing list or create a new list by specifying a new list name. To view your lists there is a new ‘My Lists’ link in addition to the user tools links to My Account and Logout. The My Lists link shows the number of lists you have and takes you to a page detailing your lists.

You can see the export and lists features demonstrated in the video of the May Prism Development Update Webinar, starting at about 20 minutes in.

This new release of Prism also includes some other new features.

  • Classification search. This is an addition to the Semantic Data Model where your local classifications are identified and indexed. You will need the new MarcGrab to refresh your data to get the benefit of this – we are about to start deploying the new MarcGrab and you are invited to raise a Support case to indicate your requirement for it. Your classifications will be searchable along with all other indexed terms, and you will also be able to target them with an expert search qualifier, ‘class:’, e.g. ‘class:641.5’. This is in addition to the existing qualifier ‘dewey:’ which searches Dewey class numbers from field 082 in the MARC record.
  • Identifiers. The Semantic Data Model will now also identify different types of data identifier and make them all searchable: ISBN (already searchable), ISSN, ISMN and EAN. Again, this is dependent on the new MarcGrab. A bug is also fixed where the display of ISBNs was duplicated.
  • Statement of Responsibility display. Another addition to the Semantic Data Model, this is also dependent on the new MarcGrab. It will provide the contents of MARC field 245 subfield $c displayed as a note. It will display by default but can be suppressed using styling tools.
  • Cover images from Syndetics. This new Prism release includes a plugin to retrieve cover images from Syndetics if you subscribe to them. This can replace the existing Juice-based tool that currently retrieves Syndetics images. If you wish to use this, please raise a Support case.

To access the preview, insert ‘/demo/’ after the prism.talis.com part of your URL and before the name of your tenancy, e.g. http://prism.talis.com/demo/worcestershire/. This enables you to search your live data and access your live Local Data Services (e.g. for availability, renewals and reservations) using the new version of Prism. You can also use it with your sandbox tenancy.

The purpose of the preview is to allow you to explore and become familiar with the new features before they are released to your users, and to ensure that everything is working correctly, particularly in relation to any local styling and other customisations.

All being well we aim to release this version to the live service on 14th June.

If you have questions on this or any other issue, please feel free to email me, terry.willan@capita.co.uk, or your Account Manager, or add a comment on this blog post.