Reference Librarians' Page |
I made a few HTML Database Pathfinders. I tried to keep them as consistent as possible with each other with regards to colors and layout. When you have time, could you look at one or two and comment on the Layout, Content, Colors, etc. (they are not yet posted to the library Web page.) Thanks!
There is a new feature within EBSCOhost:
“The Ask-A-Librarian link, when enabled by your library administrator, allows you to send questions to your library via email, right from EBSCOhost. Simply click the Ask-A-Librarian link in the upper right corner of your screen and complete the resulting form. You may also be able to include your current Search History in your email, for clarification.Library administrators can now customize the Ask-A-Librarian link label, and direct it to the website URL of their choosing, or default it to an email form.”
Would you like me to enable this feature? If so, to what, or to whom should the user be directed?
Our lists of databases under each subject are currently alphabetical. It also just lists subject specific databases under each specific category - and the general ones just under general. My concern is that people use this link when they don’t know what database they want - and that then it does not necessarily get them to the best database for what they are trying to do. They make the choice within a subject based on the titles and sometimes probably the A-Z arrangement under each.
This is particularly problematic for some topics for which Ebsco Hosts’s Academic Search Premier is really the best database and sometimes even the largest database for that topic. Also, the titles of others are often misleading and what may seem to be the most comprehensive or the most focused on their topic is not.
So, I’m wondering instead if we should have each subject librarian create a hierarchical list under each topic, and that because this is a list used primarily when people don’t know what they want - that we could have slightly fuller explanations under each database name, rather than just a list of titles. In the A-Z list, we want the list to be less cluttered, but here I think descriptions would be ok?
Even with the general list I find we have trouble. I’ve had times when patrons were choosing things like Periodical Abstracts because the name sounded more comprehensive to them, could not find what they wanted, and then came for help. When I told them that EbscoHost’s Academic Search Premier was a better place to start and that it indexed a larger number of titles, they said - well why don’t you tell us that on the webpage.
What do you all think about these issues?
I made a change to the Databases A-Z web page. I put sources that are not exactly periodical databases in a list in the right-hand column. I’ve included some reference titles here as well as some image collections and specific journals, like CQ Weekly and Scientific American. I don’t think this is the right place to list all of our online reference titles, but I do think it’s a good place to list some that we want to highlight. Tell me what you think of this method–good, bad, or indifferent–and I can make changes as you see fit.
For now, I kept the titles we had in the big list in the center and just repeated them in the list on the right. I think what I’d like to do is remove them from the big list in the center at some point. I think it might be a good thing to do that and then rename the page header to be “Article Databases” or something along those lines. The name “Databases” is too generic, I think. If we can make it clear to our students that what they really need is a database that helps them find articles then I think that’s good. And, by separating out the other kind of online titles, it will help to do that. But what do you all think?
I’ve been looking at the list of FirstSearch per-search databases and I think we could safely remove some of these from our list. By removing some, we would have fewer in our subjects and A-Z lists that require a password; I think the fewer we have that indicate ‘password required’ the better it is for us and our patrons. I propose that we remove the following databases from our lists.
Also, what do you think about removing BioDigest from our list (Sharon, especially)? This one gets under 20 searches each year.
Finally, I would like to change our link to Agricola to go to the free version at the National Agricultural Library instead of to the FirstSearch instance.
Let me know your opinions on these topics. Thanks.
