January 23, 2003

Map of the World Part OPAC (with apologies to Jane Sibbery) The University of British Columbia Library Tests Visual Net The University of British Columbia (UBC) Library is using a software product called Visual Net for Libraries to display the entire contents of its catalogue - over two and a half million items - in a visual interface.... the catalogue is displayed as an outline map of Vancouver, with books on the Westside, journals and other serials on the Eastside... There are a number of reasons why visual navigation may improve upon text. Cartography allows more information per unit of display area than any other medium, and search accuracy is increased when the categorization is exposed visually. When looking for a specific title or author, it's still better to use traditional catalogue indexes. But when a query is inexact, visual search results provide excellent access to concepts and related sources. The theory of visual representation is that, once you've become accustomed to interpreting it, users can assimilate graphical information much more rapidly than textual, and this efficiency in turn can enable them to navigate very large information spaces. To view UBC's visual catalogue: http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/visual/ For more information on Visual Net for Libraries: http://www.antarti.ca/ Other sources of information on visual interfaces: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~ngg/InfoViz/ : http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/ 3:55:44 PM     Some stats for my outboard brain The University of Windsor has received 19,997 applications from 14,625 students in Ontario secondary schools in the first round. 3,248 of the applications are first-choice. This compares with 10,233 applications (2,036 first choice) last year. Last year, a total of 8,870 students had submitted applications to Windsor by the end of the applications cycle in September. Percentage-wise, Windsor has a 95.4 per cent increase in total applications, which is higher than the system average, and 59.5 percent in first choice. The percentage of applications coming from students in the Windsor, Essex, Chatham-Kent, and Lambton County region has held steady at 24 per cent. Windsor has 3,490 applications from the region this year compared to 2,130 last year. [University of Windsor Daily News] 12:02:18 PM     Help Chat Library Continuing with the theme of 'Virtual Reference', lately the Leddy Library has been receiving requests for online assistance from all around the world, from France, United Arab Emerates, India, and Egypt. I began to wonder how these folks found us... and I tried a Google search using the words 'library help chat' and found that the Leddy Library's Chat with a Librarian service was listed fifth in the first page of results. Now I wanted to see why we were ranked so high. Google lists results by both relevance and PageRank - a ranking determined by the number of links being made to the page in question. So I first to see if anyone (other than ourselves and University of Windsor) was linking to our chat page by doing the search link:athena.uwindsor.ca/units/leddy/2002.nsf/HelpChat?OpenForm. The answer: nope. So I suspect that the reason why our ranking is so high is due to relevance. Because we use the words 'chat' 'library' and 'help' to describe ourselves, we get found by a searching use these words. Why am I going on about this? Simply put: what student is going to find online library help by using the words 'virtual reference desk? 11:55:56 AM     Virtual Reference Toolbar /usr/lib/info || Virtual Reference Toolbar. /usr/lib/info || Virtual Reference Toolbar cobrowsing, Dave's Quick Search Taskbar, bookmarklets? The ideas are flying fast and furious over on usr/lib/info. Sounds like fun. 1/23/2003 [Library Techlog] What do we want for the library? A toolbar? A library catalogue that is better integrated with the web? Virtual reference service... or do we want, as Art asks in the above link, something of each in one product? I'm still reeling under the weight of the possibilities to formulate my wishlist.   11:39:45 AM

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