The Ottawa Hospital Library is the latest Andornot client to launch Genie (part of the Inmagic DB/Text Library Suite).

The hospital library serves both hospital staff and patients from multiple locations in Ottawa. Previously, staff used several separate DB/Textworks databases to manage collections of materials for these different audiences and locations. In moving to Genie, these databases were consolidated into the single Genie Catalog to simplify access.

Most of the data conversion, including mapping of fields and converting data into the Genie databases, was done by librarian Risa Shorr. As an experienced DB/TextWorks user, Risa was able to see the similarities between her databases and those used by Genie, and use the features available in DB/TextWorks to move the data over. Andornot provided guidance and recommendations as needed.

"The combination of expertise between Andornot and Risa meant that our move to Genie was cost effective. Andornot was extremely supportive of the collaborative approach to installing and customizing Genie to meet our needs," says Margaret Quirie, Director, Library Services.

With Genie launched for library staff, the library asked Andornot to develop a new OPAC for hospital staff and patients. The new OPAC is based on the Andornot Starter Kit and features:

• quick and advanced search screens for all library materials;
• a specific search screen for patients, targeted just at those materials they may access;
• Andornot extras such as Google style search syntax with automatic ANDing of terms and stemming of words, plus enhanced navigation and display options;
• automatic display of the five most recent additions to the catalog on the Quick Search page, and a link to a canned search showing the latest materials;
• tick boxes to allow users to mark items as they find them, then submit a request to the library for those materials indicating their preferred pickup location, or email a copy of the list to themselves or a colleague, or save or print the list;
• icons in the search results to help users more easily identify the types of materials in their search results;
• Google Book Covers and links to more information on titles in the Google Books database; and
• “permalinks” and a Share button to expedite bookmarking of records and sharing with colleagues via social networking services.

View the new OPAC here.

The library often has multiple copies of a title, in different locations. As a result of the data conversion, these are represented as individual records in the Genie Catalog textbase (rather than a single Catalog record with multiple Item records). This is quite a common occurrence after a data conversion, and while it’s possible to clean it up, in this case it was simpler to modify the OPAC to group records by title, but still show the edition and location information for each individual record.

The Google Book Covers have been a particularly well-received feature, with users remembering books based on the cover they saw.

Please contact Andornot for more information on Genie, the Andornot Starter Kit, and our consulting services.

ArchivesNext is an American weblog with a monthly audience of 10,000 covering topics related to archives and technology. The award to the City of Burnaby Archives for "Best re-purposing of descriptive data" was shared with the Smithsonian Institute.

"One of the goals of the Charting Change project was to bring together Burnaby's heritage resources in a useful, accessible and interesting format that allowed our community to interact with and experience their history in a new way," said Arilea Sill, archivist for the city, in a press release. "The nomination and award announcement is a mark of success and recognition for the city as a whole for the creative approach it has taken in sponsoring such programs."

The Charting Change atlas developed by Andornot and the City of Burnaby allows users to see how historical events, ranging from First Nations settlement to the founding of Fort Langley in 1825, through to the Depression and post-war housing boom have shaped the community of Burnaby. Behind the scenes, the information shown on each map point is pulled from the existing Inmagic databases currently searchable from the Heritage Burnaby website.   Heritage landmarks, historic buildings, and neighbourhoods are plotted and linked to the records for photographs, artifacts, textual records and bylaws.

For more information on this project, see the press release from the City of Burnaby, the announcement on the ArchivesNext website or our earlier blog posts describing the project.  The atlas is available on the Heritage Burnaby website.

Our congratulations to the City of Burnaby team - it was a pleasure to work on this project with them. If you have ideas for enhancing access to your collections, be sure to contact us to discuss possibilities.

Have you been using DB/TextWorks for years and years?  When we visit clients we often come across databases that were originally designed in early versions of the software or were even ported over from DOS.   Amazingly, these continue to work just fine, but as with any system, they could benefit from a checkup every so often.  Here are a few of the quick and easy updates we like to suggest:

Forms and query screens housecleaning.

It is so easy to design new forms in DB/TextWorks that sometimes we find databases with a multitude of reports.  They may have names like report5 or test2 and no one knows what they are for, or if anyone still needs them.  If you don’t have the time to do a proper audit and check each of them with your staff, here is a quick option to jump start the cleanup process. Under Tools > Manage Textbase Elements you can Rename those that you suspect are not used with an x or z in front.  This drops them to the bottom of the list when using Select Form so that you can quickly see your most used forms first.  If no one misses these forms after a month or so it is probably safe to Delete them.  Or you can select them and Export to a file as a backup before deleting, just in case.   When saving or renaming a form it is always a good idea to use a standard naming convention that indicates the function of the form, and to add a Description as this will display when the form is highlighted under Select Form or Manage Textbase Elements. 
If you also use WebPublisher PRO,the Manage Textbase Elements list will include any that have been saved as web only. These of course should not be renamed without also editing the web interface search screen or canned query that references them.

Choosing useful fields for your log information.

The Log file tracks information as records are added or modified.  By default it is set up to use the first field in the database.  However it is easy to change the log file to be more informative through Maintain > Edit Textbase Structure > Log file.  We recommend setting the first field to be your unique auto generated ID field (you do have one of these don’t you?) plus add a more meaningful field such as Title.  Then if you have a problem, you can choose Maintain>View Log file and scroll to the bottom to see which records may have been affected.  The log file also records information on password, textbase structure or validation lists edits.  Many times no one can remember changing anything and the log file has come to the rescue in deciphering what caused a problem.  Just recently a client’s web interface suddenly prompted for a password. The log file showed that one of the support staff had added a password for a temporary employee not realizing that they needed to also add a silent password for continued use by WebPublisher PRO.

Moving your user file to a network drive.

In older versions the personal user files for each database (*.tbu) which store your preferences such as window layout, private forms and sets etc. were stored in the install directory or C:\Program Files\Inmagic.  These files can therefore easily be overlooked when migrating to a new computer, and on some networks, C drives are not backed up.  Moving these files to a network drive is now easy.  Choose Tools > Options and under the General Tab > User Options > User File directory, use the Browse button to choose a new directory.

Of course we are always available to help you with these checkups and to make recommendations for improving your databases. Watch for more hints in upcoming blog posts!

You've built this great online database of resources and you're as proud of it as a mama bear and her cubs. You just know everyone must be using it to find all sorts of great materials. But… how can you be sure? How do you know if in fact just 'cause you built it, they will come. Well, it is possible to learn quite a bit about who, how, when and how often users are accessing your site. There are two main sources of useful information: web server logs and the Inmagic WebPublisher Query logs.

Web Server Logs

Web servers typically log all activity, including serving up pages from your online database.

Software packages such as AWStats and SmarterStats analyze these log files and allow you to generate reports summarizing site activity. These two packages are installed on a server (could be the same web server as your online database, or a separate one) and are accessed through your web browser. They typically require IT involvement to install and locate the web server log files.

An alternative to log analysis software you install is Google Analytics. To use this service, you register with Google and place a small bit of code in your pages, wait for Google to gather some data, and visit your Google Analytics account to learn about your site. This approach works well for publicly-accessible sites.

At Andornot we use SmarterStats to provide statistics to all our hosted clients, and also Google Analytics on other sites such as our Genie demo.

So, once you have your logs under analysis, what can you learn from them?

Who

You can learn how many total and unique visitors your site gets, per day, week, month, etc. If your audience is known (e.g. your site is not public, but is only available to users within your organization, a known quantity) then you have a measure of what percentage of potential users are accessing your site. If your IT department can give you a list of computer IP addresses (which is what’s stored and reported on in these logs) and the corresponding names of staff who use those computers, you’ll really know who in your organization is accessing the site.

When

You can see when users are most likely to access your site and then schedule work around those times. For example, you could post new materials before the peak periods so there’s something fresh for users, and avoid updates or maintenance during those times.

How Much and How Often

You can learn whether users tend to come once and never again, or are repeat browsers. Do they come daily, weekly or monthly? Do they linger? Do they access many pages in your site, or just a few? Which ones are the most popular? What path do they follow through the site? Depending on how your site is organized, you may be able to get answers to all of these questions, then think about pushing most-accessed content to the home page, or just one link away.

Inmagic WebPublisher Pro Query Logs

You can configure Inmagic WebPublisher PRO to log all searches. To do so, add WebLogQueries=1 to the [WebPublisher] section of the DBTWPub.INI file (or INMCSRV.INI file for DB/Text for SQL). Once configured, each online search is logged in a CSV-formatted file named query.LOG, located in the WebPublisher QSETS folder. If your site receives a lot of activity, this file can grow quickly, so we recommend either only enabling this for a specific duration (e.g. one month) or periodically archiving the file and allowing a new one to start (e.g. on the first of each month). The archiving can be done using a Scheduled Task so you only need to set the process up once.

Important Note: You should only enable query logging in version 12 or later of WebPublisher Pro. Do not enable query logging in version 11.

Once you have a log file of searches, you can use the QueryLog database included with the Andornot Starter Kit to analyze it. The log file can be imported into the textbase using the Import command. You can then search for all records where the search produced no results to see, most critically, what users are searching for and not finding. Maybe your database doesn’t have the type of resources they are looking for, or maybe they’re searching with different words than you used to describe the resource. Either way, this is valuable information! You can also learn what they are searching for and finding, and as with the information from the web server logs, who, when and how often they are searching.

One Andornot client, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board loads and analyses their WebPublisher query log every week to see what people are searching for, then edits records in their databases to include any new search terms favoured by users. They were even able to identify an unexpected usage of one of their databases. It turned out that their responsiveness in quickly adding entries for search terms that had returned zero results meant that their database was more up to date than other internal sources.

Combined, web server log analysis and query log analysis can give you a pretty good picture of who is using your great online database, when, how often, and what they're finding, or not. You might supplement this with the occasional online survey, asking users for their opinion of your resources.

Need help installing and using any of this software, designing a survey, or making sense of the information gathered? We're always happy to help clients learn more about their users.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of life at Andornot is the diversity of the projects. We recently had an interesting request from a group of archivists representing the Canadian Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a group of six congregations of Sisters of St. Joseph in Ontario. Several of these congregational archives maintain Inmagic databases for their archival arrangement and description. The archivists were interested in developing a biographical database as well as designing a printer-friendly report that they could use to easily display information on their deceased sisters and organize by the anniversary of their death. We adjusted and re-indexed the databases to ensure that separate fields were used to sort in this manner. We then designed a report from an MS Word mockup and merged four databases into a single one. We thought this was an excellent and unique use for DB/Textworks.

"Kathy and Jonathan are just wonderful. They have provided the Archives Taskforce with the expertise needed to bring this project to life. We are so pleased to be able to produce a necrology that will be shared and used by so many women religious." (Linda Wicks)

You can learn more about these congregations at their websites:

• Hamilton
• London
• Toronto
• Pembroke
• Peterborough
• Sault Ste. Marie
• Federation