To register for the next Talis Prism 3 Development Update Webinar on Wednesday 18th November, please email Alison Kershaw stating that you would like to attend, we will then send you details on how to register.

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

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.

The University of Sunderland Library has made its Talis Prism 3 catalogue available as a pre-launch beta option via a link from the current Prism 2 catalogue.

Running the two versions of the catalogue in parallel is the ideal way to introduce Talis Prism 3. It allows users to experience the new catalogue without disrupting familiar options, and it has no extra overhead for your system or library staff. Introducing Talis Prism 3 at this point in the academic calendar is testament to this.

In addition to the benefits of the discovery and navigation features of Talis Prism 3 it has the flexibility for extensive design and styling, which in this case has been done by the library. They have been able to style the new catalogue to match the rest of the web site, making it feel integrated. This is further enhanced by the ability to easily include quick links to other library services and to display other information such as opening hours.

For the time being the library has opted to not display cover images. The layout of entries on the page has been adjusted accordingly.

The ability for the user to send a feedback message is an important and well used feature of Talis Prism 3, giving invaluable insights into the user’s experience. The University has supplemented this with a link to their library feedback form, and we look forward to the reception from users.

Firstly, a big thank you to all those that attended our webinar on cross-searching multiple databases, your information was very helpful in directing our future plans for Talis Prism 3.

From your answers and comments we clarified that there are two key things you want to be able to do with Talis Prism, bring in your local collections and integrate with other, larger collections.

Integrating with Larger Collections

Many of you want to be able to direct your users to one or more larger collections such as the British Library or CURL in the event that they can’t find what they need within your collection. In some cases you want to be able to use the information from those collections to generate an ILL request to borrow the material needed.

This is a great thing to do as it supports your users in getting access to the materials they need and helps maintain your catalogue’s position as the starting point for any search.

Historically this has often been done using Z39.50 federated searching, a library-centric solution that predates the web by many years. To replace this functionality in Talis Prism 3 using Z39.50 would be costly and complex. In Talis Prism 2 the same functionality evolved over a period of several years. Doing the same in Talis Prism 3 would be a substantial cost and would only ever give access to the small number of services that have Z39.50 and that we could reliably configure.

A much more common approach today, both for libraries and for other services, is to use the services website directly. On the web generally this is often as simple as a link to the other service. To maintain a more controlled search experience and to allow for the data to be used in ILL requests in future we think it would be better to aim for a more seamless inclusion of those other sites’ searches.

A number of you have a strong desire to search a small number of sites as soon as possible and have your own web developers. This is exactly the kind of demand for extensibility that led us to seed the Juice project and there are already people on the Juice project doing similar things.

So, if you are one of those interested in connecting your users with the British Library, CURL, Library of Congress or Google Books and Amazon then please Join the Juice project, sign up to the Juice Discussion Group where you will find others, including some of us from Talis, taking advantage of Juice.

If you don’t have your own development resource and would like to discuss Talis writing custom extensions for you then please raise that with Alison Kershaw or your account manager.

If you have any specific queries about Juice then email Richard Wallis, coordinator of the Juice project.

Integrating Local Collections not in your LMS

Many of you also have local collections that for a number of reasons are managed outside of your LMS. DS Calm and iBase are common examples and you also talked about electronic serials data. Where the collection, and data about it, are under your ownership and control you expressed that you would like these to appear in Talis Prism searches as part of your whole collection.

In many cases the separation of these parts of your collection has been a side-effect of the tools needed to manage the data and is no longer serving your users well, so bringing this data together will be a good thing. Representing different types of asset within Talis Prism 3 is one of the drivers behind our re-working of the underlying data model and that stream of work will facilitate bringing in other collections in future. Look out for it appearing in future issues of the roadmap as we plan beyond our current horizon.

Our analysis of these collections shows that the detail of how each collection has been configured and how fields have been used is crucial to providing both appropriate indexing and display. This means that when we reach a position where this data could be brought into Talis Prism 3 there will almost certainly be a need for bespoke consultancy. That consultancy is likely to be needed in order to understand what form the data is in, how you’ve used the product locally and how you want those collections to appear in Talis Prism 3.

If you have other local collections, keep an eye on the roadmap and the blog so that when we start looking at this area in detail you know to get involved.

The Talis Prism roadmap is available from the Talis Prism site.

Rob Styles
Technical Lead, Talis Prism 3

A milestone for Talis Prism 3 has been passed today with this release;  the live service is now being managed through the new administration interface.

Before we release the new administration interface to you, we are using it to make changes on your behalf enabling us to ensure usability.

If you would like any changes made to your Talis Prism 3 catalogue in the meantime, then please raise these to either your Talis Prism 3 Implementation Consultant or Alison Kershaw.

To keep up to date with the latest Talis Prism 3 news and announcements please visit the Talis Prism 3 Microsite and register for the next Talis Prism 3 Development Update webinar.

Last Friday, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) went live with their Talis Prism 3 catalogue, as well as with Talis Alto.

Styled by the Talis Design Team, the new catalogue has received positive comments from early visitors such as ‘really striking’ and ‘lovely look’. To learn more about the Talis Design service for Talis Prism 3, please contact your Account Manager.

The engaging styling, coupled with the effective discovery features of Talis Prism 3 – a single search box, relevance ranked results, faceted navigation – will help improve user success and usage of the catalogue and the library.

For more about RSAMD and Talis please see the press release.

This release, now available for preview, enables Talis Prism 3 to be managed through the new administration interface, which Talis is now using to manage Talis Prism 3 catalogues on behalf of customers. This is the final testing that Talis has scheduled before looking to release the administration interface for beta testing by customers.

If you would like any changes made to your Talis Prism 3 catalogue in the meantime, then please raise these to either your Talis Prism 3 Implementation Consultant or Alison Kershaw.

To keep up to date with the latest Talis Prism 3 news and announcements please visit the Talis Prism 3 Microsite.

Please send any feedback on this preview to Alison Kershaw.

The latest release of Talis Prism 3 has focused on two areas:

The start in the improvements to the search performance that Talis have planned, and the re-organisation of the way the data for the interface language is managed; this is a first step towards delivering the fruits of the work we have been doing on administration for Talis Prism.

The Talis Prism 3 Development Update Webinar on 9^th September will look to explain the Administration Interface in further detail, to register for this webinar please email Alison Kershaw.

Customers with Talis Prism 3 are now able to try out this new release in preview, as usual, with a fully functioning view of their own catalogue and data but using this new version of the software.

Release to the live service of this work is scheduled for Wednesday 2nd September, but please send any feedback on this preview to Alison Kershaw.

To keep up to date with the latest Talis Prism 3 news and announcements please visit the Talis Prism 3 Microsite.