Matthew Reidsma

Work Notes

Updates from the GVSU Libraries’ Web Team.
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OPAC Changes

Today I made a few small changes to the catalog that I want you to know about. They are:

  1. Changed the ‘MARC View’ button into a text link and moved it to the bottom of a record, next to the permalink.
  2. Hid the ‘Call #’ field in the Item Details for eBooks.
  3. Restyled the 856 field link to be more noticeable and in line with our design patterns

Here is an eBook record with the new changes:

New eBook record page

Here are some more details about the changes:

  1. The MARC view is great for folks who want to see the structured metadata of a record, but the vast majority of those folks either work here or hold MLIS degrees. Most of the folks that clicked that button would immediately click to get back to the regular view. Plus, Staff View makes it easy to see the MARC view by default if you are logged in. The link is still available, but by tucking it away at the bottom of the record, I hope we won’t get as many inadvertent clickers.

  2. While looking through the LibStats over the past few years (now LibAnalytics), we saw a lot of folks who were having trouble finding books on the shelf. It turns out that they were looking for eBooks. While eBooks don’t have an item listing with a call number, they do provide the call number in the Item Details section of the metadata. A lot of users have written down that call number and searched in vain for their eBook. About a year ago, Jeff and Patrick asked me to hide the call numbers, but they said “no rush.” I took them at their word! I hid the Call number in the public view, but if you need it, toggle over to the MARC view.

  3. I can’t believe it took me this long to make that link more noticeable. It is the most important thing on the page, and so I made it look that way. Now it adheres to the “Make it a big blue button” philosophy for things we want people to click. You’ll notice that this button is a nit different than our other buttons: it’s got sharp corners, and is slightly darker. That’s because we’re moving to the new campus CMS 4 later this summer, and I’m going to have to move all of our design assets over to the new look (which should be easy with the magic of design patterns and CSS!)

As always, let me know if you have any questions!