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

The Law Society Library is a long-time Inmagic user, with several textbases used to manage books, journals, legal resources, and other materials. These databases are maintained in the Society’s two main offices in Regina and Saskatoon, with online access for society members through the society's website.

One of the challenges facing the library was managing all of these databases from separate locations. "We were looking for any way to streamline our core tasks of acquisitions and circulation by eliminating double and sometimes triple data entry and the never-ending battle of syncing databases," says Toby Willis-Camp, Director of Libraries at the Law Society. The library selected Genie as a solution, as it provides a single, central, web-based system for all the core library functions. The library also opted to have Andornot host both the Genie system, as well as the entire society website, with its members-only resources and other searchable databases.

Andornot and the staff in the Law Society Library planned and completed a conversion of several Inmagic databases into the Genie system, with special attention paid to de-duplicating records from similar source databases.

While the library staff use the Genie Catalogue, Orders, Serials and other "back-end" modules for their day-to-day work, a new search interface for society members and the public was created, based on the Andornot Starter Kit. This OPAC features:

• quick and advanced search screens for all library materials;
• a specific search screen for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) materials;
• the full text of CPD materials, with a link from the record to a PDF of the material, for immediate online access;
• tick boxes allow society members to mark items as they find them, then submit a request to the library for those materials, or email a copy of the list to themselves or a colleague, or save or print the list; and
• icons in the search results to help users more easily identify the types of materials in their search results. Different icons appear for books, journals, websites, DVDs and CPD materials.

"Every time I use the OPAC I break out into a huge smile, because I am so pleased with how it's working and presents the information.  I am absolutely ecstatic about the 'public face' we now present," says Willis-Camp.

Members of the Law Society register in a different online system, but thanks to a behind-the-scenes transfer of information into Genie on a regular basis, the Genie Borrowers database is always up to date with society members.

"It was a year filled with immense change at the Library.  Working with Andornot made most of those changes go more smoothly.  We are looking forward to using Genie at its full potential, and continuing to improve and expand our web presence with Andornot's expert assistance." says Willis-Camp.

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

Library catalogues are boring.  Face it, their dullness is only mitigated by the thrill received when your catalogue search results have either a link to the full text or a website or to an image or something other than just the basic bibliographic details.  Ok, some folks use the library catalogue to find books - on the shelf and in their library - but if you are not familiar with that book, how do you know if it is worth your while seeking out? 

See the cover and preview the book.  Now there is a way to liven up and to add value to your catalogue, with both a book cover image and a preview of the text, if they are available.  Just by having the book's ISBN in the catalogue database, a link can be made to Google Books.  With this link you can have an image of the book's cover in full and beautiful colour displayed next to the bibliographic information.  You can also have a link to the Google Book Preview, if it is available.  Andornot has long since advocated enhancing the library catalogue and added the Google Books covers and previews to its own Starter Kit.  We then suggested that Inmagic WebPublisher PRO hosted clients do the same. 

Several clients took up the offer and now there are many examples to show you.  Elizabeth Lamont from the Royal Victoria Hospital Library, who oversees the coordination of the McGill University Health Centre Libraries catalogue (try the New Books link), loved this feature:  "Nice visuals for our users. We particularly like the added information on book contents. All without any extra work on our part!"  Both Lance Nordstom and Marci Gibson from WorkSafeBC appreciated the addition to their library catalogue of "a bit of colour to the results pages".  When it was suggested to Leah Harms, the librarian at the Resource Library for the Environment and the Law, that she add this feature to her library catalogue, she said of the Google Books Preview example shown to her that she "had no idea how great that book was until I read the preview."  And after we added them Leah commented: "I really am very pleased with the vibrancy of the covers and the usefulness of having the preview links. They function to better pique curiosity much like abstracts do for journal articles."

You can also see this feature on a few other catalogue databases:  Northern Health, Interior Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, Fraser Health, and the Resource Centre for Voluntary Organizations.  For best results, may we suggest that you search for books published since 2000.

Contact us to help you add Google Book covers and previews to your online catalogue. 

A bit of history

And so it grows

The renovations

The extras

The future

As reported in my last post, Inmagic Webpublisher 11 broke some of our utility scripts. This release is compatible with WPP 11, and is still backwards-compatible with earlier versions.

Download them from our demo site at ask.andornot.com:

Andornot Search Utilities 1.9

Andornot Result Utilities 1.11

is NOT recommended.

Usually not added when you first install WPP, check your DBTWPUB.ini file in your WPP installation folder on your web server. Make sure that you do not have the line of code "WebCSSOpt=2" as our ASK web forms will not display properly.

You can edit the DBTWPUB.ini file in Notepad and either change it to WebCSSOpt=0 or delete that line entirely.

Below is the DB/TextWorks Help file article for more information....

WebPublisher PRO: Form layout

By default, WebPublisher version 4.1 and later uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and absolute positioning, so that report, display, and edit forms look as much as possible as they would look in DB/TextWorks.

WebPublisher detects whether the browser supports Cascading Style Sheets. If not, WebPublisher uses simple HTML (boxes will be left-justified, box labels will appear on top rather than to the left, and so forth).

Forms that contain Raw HTML or inline images are incompatible with absolute positioning. Forms containing these elements will have overlapping text unless very carefully designed. Therefore, simple HTML is used for this type of form unless you explicitly set WebCSSOpt=2 in your DBTWPUB.INI file (see below).

Note: DB/TextWorks tabular forms do not use absolute positioning, so this issue does not affect them.

You can use picture boxes in place of inline images to retain CSS formatting. The Image size option specified using Box Properties>Position in the Form Designer is used. In order for the image sizing to work properly, the images must reside either in the textbase folder (for example, C:\CATALOG\) or the folder specified in the Image field in the record (for example, C:\IMAGES\COYOTE.JPG).

To control whether the site uses CSS, set the WebCSSOpt= parameter in the [WebPublisher] section of your DBTWPUB.INI file equal to one of the following:

0 = do not use CSS 1 = the default behavior 2 = use CSS regardless of whether forms contain Raw HTML or inline images

Example

[WebPublisher] WebCSSOpt=0

Note: The WebCSSOpt= parameter affects all forms and all textbases, unless you override it using the CS= parameter in an individual query screen.