Grey literature, fugitive publications, the hidden web; it sounds all very mysterious doesn’t it? Where are these resources? How can they be found? Well for the folks in Alberta – and because it is on the Internet, for the rest of the world – this previously concealed material in the non-profit and social services “third” sector now has a home at threeSOURCE: http://www.threesource.ca. See the press release here.

Database

The database that forms the basis of the site contains a vast quantity of grey literature from groups such as the Alberta Federation of Labour, Alberta Status of Women Action Committee, Family Service Association of Edmonton, Calgary Status of Women Action Committee, and Families First Edmonton. It also contains the ESPC catalogue collection, which during the course of the project was converted from another system, L4U, using the MARC Transformer, into Inmagic DB/TextWorks.

Jennifer Hoyer from the Edmonton Social Planning Councilspearheaded this new website with funding assistance from Alberta Culture and Community Spirit and the Edmonton Community Foundation.

“There is currently no central location, either physically or virtually, for accessing publications created within or about this field of work.  People working within the third sector – in social services and nonprofits – are notoriously short on time when it comes to finding information and staying current within their field.  ThreeSOURCE hopes to make this process easier by presenting a one-stop-shop,” writes Jennifer.

Website

Andornot assisted with almost every aspect of this site, from the recommendation of Artisteer as the basis for the website graphic design, which Jennifer took to enthusiastically, to the deployment of the site on the ESPC server. Our team integrated the website design into the ASP.NET based Umbraco Content Management System. We set Jennifer up with the desktop interface of the Andornot Starter Kit so she could catalogue grey literature while we developed the web interface. This included the database component, which consisted of the quick and advanced search screens, brief displays, a full display, Google book covers, a RSS feed for the latest database additions, and the Email, Save, and Print components. The web catalogue uses Inmagic WebPublisher PRO as the underlying search engine.

Content Management System

Once the website was up and running on our development server with Umbraco, Jennifer could login through a web browser and start adding website content to the site. Andornot put the final touches to the site, such as a link to their newsletter sign in and an RSS feed from the database and then moved the whole site over to the ESPC server.

“One of the key features of this audience is that they generally access and share information in a very social way: they discuss the latest developments in their field over coffee with colleagues, and they share new publications with their email contacts,” writes Jennifer. “We wanted to replicate this social aspect in some manner, and the RSS feed of New Acquisitions is a starting point for engaging our audience beyond the library catalogue interface.”

Topic Searches

Using Umbraco, Jennifer is able to quickly add new canned or topic searches to the home page, which can be based on recent requests for information or hot topics. To illustrate, Jennifer writes:

“We were recently approached for information regarding affordable housing solutions for seniors, to support a proposal for a related project.  A quick search of subjects such as “Seniors” and “Housing – affordable housing solutions” brought up the Wellesley Institute’s recent report on Precarious Housing in Canada (2010) and the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies Analysis of housing for seniors living with disabilities using a livable and inclusive community lens (2009).  The former provides federal government funding allocations towards housing for low-income seniors.  The latter identifies affordability as a top major housing issue faced by seniors and seniors with disabilities, and pointed towards other publications confirming the urgent nature of this issue.”

She promptly added a link to all the items in the database on the topic Housing for Seniors after receiving that request for information. We are sure that the page will soon fill up with links to other relevant topics as they are determined, making the finding of relevant information in the third sector so much easier.

Congratulations to the Edmonton Social Planning Councilon the launch of this valuable resource.  Contact us for more information on project specifics. 

In collaboration with Artefactual Systems, Andornot has developed an Encoded Archival Description (EAD) export report that can be used with our Archives Online textbases, or other, similar Inmagic DB/TextWorks archival databases.

EAD is an XML standard for encoding archival finding aids, maintained by the US Library of Congress in partnership with the Society of American Archivists.

The DB/TextWorks EAD export report was developed specifically for use by British Columbia archives to contribute detailed archival descriptions (to the item level) to MemoryBC, the province-wide online archival repository operated by the Archives Association of British Columbia.

The EAD XML export report is included with the latest version of Archives Online, but is also available as an exported textbase form that can be imported into any existing Inmagic DB/TextWorks database. Some adjustment of the form will be required for earlier versions of Archives Online and other databases.

To use the EAD export, you would:

1. import the EAD report into your textbase and adjust to match your fields if necessary;

2. search for one or more fonds and view the results with the EAD_XML report; and

3. write the report to a file with a ".xml" extension (e.g. myfonds.xml).

The XML file may be opened in a text editor such as Notepad to preview the results, then uploaded to another system, including MemoryBC.

The report is available at no charge by contacting Andornot (regular consulting fees will apply if you need any assistance with the report and export).

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.

Why enter records into your database when you can have someone else do it for you? Or at least, why not borrow records from other sources and import them into your database? It’s quite easy to do, saving time and improving accuracy. One approach to this is:

1. Use a service such as Bookwhere, Biblios.net or PubMed to search for records in numerous online databases, for materials such as books, journals, articles, videos, maps ­- anything that might have been catalogued by someone somewhere may be found (see our blog post on Biblios.net).
2. Save records in MARC XML format (though any XML format can be used).
3. In Genie (part of the Inmagic Library Suite), use the included Bookwhere XSLT to convert selected MARC tags to Genie fields and import records. (XSLT is short for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation, and is a language used to transform XML data into other formats).
4. In Inmagic DB/Text, customize an XSLT to map MARC XML or any other XML data source to your data structure and import records.
5. After importing records, you would of course further customize them to suit your database.

If you use Genie, it includes an XSLT (Bookwhere.xsl in the Genie ImporterFiles folder) that maps MARC XML fields into Genie fields. You can customize this XSLT further for your cataloging needs. For example, some MARC tag to Genie field mappings we have added include:

 

MARC Tags	Genie Field
090 or 050	CatCallNumber
520	CatAbstract
856 subfield u	CatURL
856 subfield y	CarURLNotes
246, 247, 730, 740, 770, 772, 776, 780, 785, 787	CatAlternateTitle
Leader position 6 or 7	CatRecordType

Here's an example of the above Leader mapping added to the Genie Bookwhere.xsl transformation:

<xsl:template name="RecordType2" match="marc:leader">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 8, 1 )='s'">

'CatRecordType' Periodical

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 7, 1 )='a'">

'CatRecordType' Book

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 7, 1 )='g'">

'CatRecordType' Videorecording

</xsl:when>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:template>

Virtually any XML file can be imported into a textbase using an XSL. The beauty of XSLT is that data cleanup can be done as part of the process. For example, ALL CAPS can be converted to Title case, fields can be separated or joined, dates can be transformed to other formats, and much more.

 

If you have imported information into Genie from another source, using TextWorks or the importer, or typed it in directly in TextWorks, you may have lines of text that are separated only by line feeds, rather than entered as subfields.  They may have appeared to have the correct layout in TextWorks, but when displayed on the web in Genie, may appear to run together.

For example, text that started out like this:

Contents

Chapter 1: Feasibility

Chapter 2: Accountability

Chapter 3: Operational Issues

may appear online as:

ContentsChapter 1: FeasibilityChapter 2: AccountabilityChapter 3: Operational Issues

To have this appear as intended in Genie, you could edit each record individually in the Genie Catalog, but a faster way is to use TextWorks to Batch Replace those line breaks with subfield marks. (You will need to have access to the TextWorks Windows client to do this) .

To do this:

1. In TextWorks, search for all records with data in the field requiring modification, using the * wildcard in that field.

2. Select Records > Batch Modify from the TextWorks menu.

3. Complete the Batch Modify dialogue as follows:

• Field to Modify: select the field requiring modification
• Operation: "Substitute Text"
• Affects: Matching
• Find What: {LF}
• Replace With: {SF}

{LF} represents a line feed or paragraph break. {SF} represents a subfield indicator.

4. Perform the batch modification to change all occurrences of the line feed character in the selected field in the selected records to a subfield indicator, then check the results in Genie.

Note: If you are at all in doubt about the batch modification process, backup your complete database before making any changes.

Next, you would edit the MyReports.config configuration file. In this file, find the OPACFull report and the relevant field within that report definition, and add the following line:

Separator="&lt;br/&gt;"

e.g. <Field Name="CatAbstract" Separator="&lt;br/&gt;"/>

This causes every subfield to be separated with the <br/> tag. Repeat for the CatalogFull report and any other reports in which this field appears.

Another option in Genie is to edit the MyReports.config file to wrap the field in <pre> tags, which causes the text to display exactly as entered, without the use of subfields. The disadvantage of this approach is that the text will appear in a fixed-width font and long lines will not wrap. If you wish to try this, edit the field definition as described above, in MyReports.config, to add

Header="&lt;pre&gt;"and Footer="&lt;/pre&gt;"

e.g. <Field Name="CatAbstract" Header="&lt;pre&gt;" Footer="&lt;/pre&gt;"/>

and see if you like this look in Genie.