University Libraries’ Online Catalog CardCat Gets New Look and Feel

Ball State University students, faculty, staff, and guests using CardCat, the University Libraries’ online catalog, will notice a new look and feel to the catalog at the start of Spring Semester. James W. Hammons, Head of Library Technologies, unveiled the redesigned catalog at a presentation for Libraries’ personnel on Thursday, December 17, 2009.

Major highlights of the new interface include these:

• Bookmarking of any page and easily viewing permanent links. Before, because each CardCat session has a different URL, users could not reliably bookmark items or search results. This new feature allows users to add bookmarks with a single mouse click or to view a persistent link to items or search results.

• Permanent Lists, for logged-in users. Users now have the ability to create, modify, and view lists of items without losing the lists after ending a CardCat session. Users can create several different lists. Temporary lists will still be available as well, for both logged-in and guest users.

• A new look and feel to the My Account section. Checkouts, holds, and bookings will display on different tabs, include links to item details, and feature sortable columns.

Throughout CardCat, users will notice a more streamlined look and feel, with text links replacing images, and design elements featured in other University Libraries’ services. Many customizations that the Libraries have added to CardCat will also appear in the new version, such as links to GoogleBooks and HathiTrust.

CardCat is the Libraries’ implementation of SirsiDynix’s e-Library, which replaces SirsiDynix’s iLink. Jim Hammons expects to put the new version of CardCat into production during the last week of December 2009. In addition to James W. Hammons, Katie M. Bohnert (in her previous position as Library Technologies Support Analyst), and Robert L. Seaton, Web Development Analyst, contributed to this project.

For more information, contact James W. Hammons, Head of Library Technologies, JHammons@bsu.edu, 765-285-8032.

More Digital Resources Now Accessible through the University Libraries’ Public Catalog

Three recent enhancements to the University Libraries’ public catalog, CardCat, dramatically enhance its power as a discovery tool for digital resources. Two of these involve links to two major, freely available repositories of digitized books. The third makes CardCat a comprehensive source for access to the University Libraries’ electronic journal collections.

Google Book Search Previews. Introduced in August 2009, CardCat now presents both a Google Preview search button and a preview pane on full-item views when an item is available in Google’s massive digital repository. CardCat users can browse the books directly in CardCat or follow the “More about this Book” link to use all the features of Google Book Search, including reviews, user tags, and links to related books. Limited previews are available for most Google Books, with many public domain books (items published prior to about 1924) available free in full text. In many cases, the Libraries’ local holdings of these titles are available in our Archives and Special Collections. The advantage of having digital access is that they are now freely available for access outside of the University Libraries.

Hathi Trust Digital Library. Added to CardCat in early October 2009, this new button leads to the growing Hathi Trust catalog of digitized books. According to its Web site, the Hathi Trust “was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections.” The link button currently appears in over 15,000 CardCat records with matching titles in the Hathi Trust. All the titles we link to are in the public domain and can be freely accessed in full text. For more information about the Hathi Trust, see www.hathitrust.org.

Serials Solutions 360 MARC Updates Service. As a follow up to the suite of Serials Solutions products which the University Libraries rolled out during the spring and summer of 2009, including MultiSearch, MultiLink, and the re-launched Electronic Journals portal, the University Libraries have begun to catalog records for the electronic journals in MultiLink and the Electronic Journals portal. The new CardCat records link to the Electronic Journals portal will list one or more online sources for the journal title. With these 35,000-plus records, as well as monthly updates, CardCat now offers an additional, comprehensive access point for electronic journals.

Dr. Arthur W. Hafner, Dean of University Libraries, said that increasing access to informational resources at the desktop for students and faculty is one of the Libraries’ strategic initiatives. He said that these three enhancements to CardCat were achieved through the efforts of many personnel, particularly Kathryn M. Bohnert and James W. Hammons from Library Information Technology Services and Katharine D. James, Scott R. McFadden, and Kelley C. McGrath from Collection Resources Management.

For more information, contact James W. Hammons, Head of Library Technologies, JHammons@bsu.edu, 765-285-8032.

University Libraries’ Public Catalog Connects to Google Books

The University Libraries have launched an exciting new discovery tool that increases the scope of desktop, point-and-click digital information delivery through the University Libraries, offering Ball State’s students and faculty a more robust and integrated virtual library experience.

This powerful new feature connects CardCat (the University Libraries online catalog) records to digital copies of books found in the expansive Google Book Search Project (GBSP). Now students and faculty performing research in CardCat can read excerpts or even the full-text of books by clicking on the Google Preview button or using the embedded Google Book’s reader located at the bottom of the record.

According to Dr. Arthur W. Hafner, Dean of University Libraries, “This innovative new application developed by our librarians greatly expands the volume of resources that the Libraries offer to Ball State students and faculty to achieve their educational and research objectives.”

The GBSP, a massive book digitization project begun in 2004, now includes nearly seven million books available through agreements with authors, publishers, and civic, academic, and special libraries. Through Google’s private contracts, library partnerships, and a pending legal settlement with authors, nearly 70% of the seven million books in GBSP are available for limited preview or full-text viewing. Limited previews of books are offered when a book is still in copyright. In this case, rights holders decide how much of the book will be made available online. Full-text viewing is available when a book is considered to be in the public domain, typically titles published before 1923.

While not all books in CardCat have a counterpart in Google Books, Google Preview greatly enhances the value of the Libraries’ catalog as a research portal for those items that have a link, creating a more engaging experience for the user. In addition to providing book covers, when available, students and faculty realize the real value of the service since they are able to browse or read books from their desktop. Researchers can evaluate a resource from the desktop and make informed research selections before visiting the Libraries’ stacks.

The University Libraries are fully invested in information-delivery innovations that help students and faculty discover the rich resources offered through our broad print and digital collections.

The launch of the Google Book Search Preview within the Libraries’ CardCat is just one more way in which the Libraries support teaching, learning, and research through the continual expansion of information access, redefining education and research in an environment of seamless knowledge discovery and increased digital integration.

For more information, contact Matthew C. Shaw, Collections Development Librarian, MCShaw2@bsu.edu, 765-285-1302.

Google Book Search Project: Its Promise for Ball State University's Students, Faculty for Research, Learning

Libraries without walls has become a catchphrase, the digital dream of making information available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The Google Book Search Project (GBSP), a massive book digitization project begun in 2004, is taking us strides closer to that reality, http://books.google.com.

As part of Google’s newest partnership with Princeton University Library, Google plans to scan and make available one million titles over the next six years. Google has already established book digitization agreements with leading civic and national libraries like the New York Public Library and the National Library of Catalonia and academic libraries, including Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of California, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Virginia, University of Texas at Austin, and Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Google has also announced that it will partner with Germany’s Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library).

Initially, Google adopted an aggressive, hotly contested, plan to digitize books indiscriminate of copyright. Google’s problematic proposal to digitize any book unless formally forbidden by contact from authors, publishers, or other copyright holders mired early digitization progress. However, the library partnerships quickly refocused digitization efforts on public domain titles, books published before 1924 that are no longer protected by copyright law.

To date, GBSP provides access to 524,600 full text, public domain books, fully searchable and available 24/7/365 to Ball State University students and faculty. This translates into unprecedented research access to both popular and rare titles from the period of 1521 - 1924. Whether looking for a 17th Century discourse on witchcraft, a cookery book from 1810, or a New York Times bestseller from 1900, Google Book Search Project is the place to go!

Locating a book is simple, and Google offers advanced search fields including author, title, ISBN, publication year, and publisher. For example, if you are only interested in antebellum writings on American slavery, you can enter your search terms and add a publication range of 1840 to 1860. Select “Full View” to limit searching only to public domain books, where full-text viewing is available to the user. Additionally, Google provides powerful right-hand navigation of a retrieved book and links the user to the book’s title page, table of contents, and index. A search box for full-text searching within the retrieved book allows a user to locate relevant parts of a text without browsing through page after page of the book. This functionality empowers Ball State students and faculty to conduct streamlined and precise textual research.

Another important long-term benefit of GBSP is the creation of digital surrogates for the increasing number of brittle books that are too fragile to circulate and are often stored for preservation with very limited physical access. GBSP is at once offering unprecedented access to aged texts and democratizing research, eliminating the need for rare book interlibrary loan borrowing fees or expensive travel to research repositories. Additionally, fragile books are protected from overuse and excessive handling.

As Ball State’s University Libraries continue to leverage the power of technology to organize and present access to dynamic learning and teaching resources, we recognize the value of directing our users to the GBSP as a growing and unequaled online research resource for pre-1924 texts.

To make this searching easier for students and faculty, the University Libraries provide ubiquitous linking from our site to this invaluable resource. Links are available through the Digital Commons on both the e-Books page and under each subject in the World Wide Web Resources page. The Google Book Search Project is an important asset to the University Libraries’ digital initiatives and enhances the rich print and digital collections already made available by the University Libraries for teaching, learning, and research.
For more information, contact Matthew C. Shaw, Ball State University Libraries’ Electronic Resources Librarian, MCShaw2@bsu.edu, (765) 285-1302.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 7; March 2007.