Recent improvements to SUNCAT

A recent release of SUNCAT includes two new features: My SUNCAT, and a serials holdings comparison service.

My SUNCAT

My SUNCAT allows users to sign in to SUNCAT and save searches to reuse at a later date,  save records and organise them into lists, and create custom groups of libraries and locations to use in searches.   To find out more please see our My SUNCAT Guide.

Serials Holdings Comparison service

We’re also pleased to announce that the holdings comparison service that SUNCAT offers to the UKRR has been extended to enable libraries to run their own serials holdings comparisons against the data held in SUNCAT.   This free tool allows libraries to compare holdings for serials across more than 100 UK academic and research libraries.  Libraries can discover which serials are rare or unique, which are widely held and which are marked for UKRR retention.  Analysis can be made at the national level or the local level by selecting particular libraries to include in the comparison.

The results can help libraries make decisions about:

  • Keeping older print serials or moving them into storage
  • Deselecting lower use print serials if commonly held
  • Collaborating with other libraries to ensure sustainable access to at least one copy of a serial
  • Cancelling or renewing current subscriptions depending on alternative access locally or via ILL.

To find out more about using the serials holdings comparison service, please see http://www.suncat.ac.uk/librarians/holdings-comparison-service.html.

Browsing SUNCAT

In a recent release of SUNCAT we reintroduced browse functionality which had been missing since we moved over to the new interface last year.

Although searching is probably the more common way of finding a known item (especially since the arrival of Google), browsing can prove useful if you aren’t quite sure what it is you are looking for. It can lead to serendipitous and new discoveries and help you find out about the unknown unknowns!

You can start browsing by clicking on the “Browse� link underneath the search boxes on the service homepage/basic search page. There is also a link in the navigation section on the top left hand side of all the remaining service pages.

Click on the "Browse" link on the SUNCAT homepage

Click on the “Browse” link on the SUNCAT homepage

To start browsing just enter a term(s) or the first few letters of a term into the browse box and choose what you would like to browse by, e.g. by title, by subject, by publisher etc. and click on the “Browse� button.

Enter your term(s) and select an index

Enter your term(s) and select an index

You can browse by:

A list of results will open up beneath the browse box at the appropriate point in the alphabetical listing for the index you have chosen. So the top result might be the exact term(s) you entered, if it exists in SUNCAT, but if not, it will be the closest term after this alphabetically. For example, if you choose to browse by title and enter the term “beards� the results will start with “Beardsley news�. From here you can either use the “Forward� or “Back� navigation buttons to browse back or forward in the alphabetical listing.

The number of serial records associated with each result is displayed in the right hand column. Click on a result to view these records.

Click on a result to view the associated records

Click on a result to view the associated records

There are also two additional numerical indexes available ISBN and ISSN (the international unique identifiers for monographs and serials).

If you have any queries about the browse feature or SUNCAT in general please contact the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

New Release (3.2.0) of SUNCAT

SUNCAT will be upgraded in the middle of next week with a release including a number of new features and fixes to some existing bugs.

The most significant new addition will enable you to browse as well as search SUNCAT. You can access the browse options by clicking on the link underneath the search boxes on the homepage or from the navigation menu on the left hand side of the other pages.

New browse feature

 

There are a range of indexes available for browsing including:

  • Exact Title
  • ISSN
  • Subject Headings
  • Author
  • Publisher

Entering a term and browsing on any of the indexes will take you to the nearest point on that index and enable you to browse alphabetically forwards and backwards.

Browse options

 

Other new features comprise:

  • Improvements to how the Institution and Format filters interact on the search results page. You will be able to filter your results to a particular institution AND you can then filter further to see just electronic or print items at that institution.
  • Improvements to the responsive design so that SUNCAT should now work better on your tablet or mobile.
  • Plus a range of fixes which will help the service run more smoothly and intuitively.

We hope you find the new functionality helpful and easy to use, please let us have any feedback via the “Contact” link at the foot of all the SUNCAT pages or via the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

 

Retiral of the original SUNCAT interface

We announced back in November 2012 that we would be developing a new SUNCAT interface and have posted a number of items about the development along the way. Now, following the positive feedback on the new interface from the last survey, we would like to retire the original SUNCAT interface at the end of next month on Friday 26th September.

The original interface was went live as a pilot service in early 2005, and proved to be popular for it’s simplicity and ease of use, but we hope you agree that the new interface represents a significant improvement and modernisation of the SUNCAT service.

We would be grateful if you could move to using the new interface, if you haven’t already, as soon as possible and also if you could update any bookmarks accordingly. The address for the homepage of the new service remains as http://suncat.ac.uk.

One feature which will no longer be available is the Google search gadget (http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&url=http://www.suncat.ac.uk/ig/suncat-search.xml). We understand that Google will not support this in the long term so we have not updated this to work with the new interface. If, however, there is sufficient interest we would be happy to investigate providing an alternative as a future development.

Please also contact us as soon as possible via the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk if you have any queries or concerns about this or the switch off of the original interface in general.

Report on the Survey of the New Look Service

We’ve just published the report from the survey we conducted on the new look SUNCAT. The survey ran from the end of May to the end of June 2014.

The results of the survey were largely very positive but it did highlight a few areas where we can focus on making improvements.

The vast majority of respondents, 88%, found SUNCAT “Quite Easy” or “Very Easy” to use. Five percent reported that they found SUNCAT “Very Difficult” to use and on further investigation this was revealed to be due to a compatibility problem with older versions of Internet Explorer. However, as soon as we noticed these responses we investigated and we believe that these issues are now resolved, see the blog post: Problems using the new service on the IE8 browser

Further, 91% of respondents indicated that they found the new service better than the original one.

The most popular features on the new SUNCAT with the highest proportion of respondents reporting that they were either “Very useful� or “Quite useful� were:

  • Links to library’s local catalogues in the holdings display (91%)
  • Icons differentiating print and online holdings in the holdings display (90%)
  • Electronic only/non-electronic only format limit on the advanced search page (86%)
  • More search options on the advanced search page (86%)
  • Library information pages (linked to from library name in the holdings display) (82%)
Feature Popularity (Percentage of Respondents Reporting the Feature as Useful or Very Useful)
Links to library’s local catalogues in the holdings display 91
Icons differentiating print and online holdings in the holdings display 90
Electronic only/non-electronic only format limit on the advanced search page 86
More search options on the advanced search page 86
Library information pages (linked to from library name in the holdings display) 82
Results automatically ranked by relevance 77
Post-search filters on left-hand side of the results screen 75
More flexible and granular library and location limits on the basic search page 68
Option to choose how many results to view per page 67
Expanded table of contents (available on more titles) 63
Auto-suggestions on entering search terms 54
Map of all Contributing library locations on the basic search page 26
Newsfeed from the SUNCAT Blog on the basic search page 17

 

Respondents were also asked to comment on their favourite features. The most popular features were the format limiting, format filtering and format icons.

“I really like being able to tell at a glance whether a library has print or online holdings for a particular journal.�

“… is especially useful as it alerts to licensing issues etc. and therefore prevents requests that will fail and saves time in getting information to the library user.�

Second to these were the additional library information pages and the links to local catalogues:

“The improved links through to library information and the links to the local library catalogue is a big improvement.�

“The new library information pages are very helpful as I work in Interlibrary loans and this feature gives me important information very quickly without having to try and locate it on the library’s own website or in the BL’s directory of library codes.â€�

Followed by the clear design, ease of use and general usefulness of the new service:

“Cleaner, easier to read and navigate�

“much nicer interface – much more obvious in terms of how to use itâ€�

We also used the survey to find out what improvements our users would like to see in SUNCAT so that we can use this information to plan and prioritise our future developments. The following table summarises the suggestions and EDINA’s responses.

Suggested Improvement EDINA Response
Ensure the new service is compatible with older browsers We have investigated this and believe that the necessary changes have now been implemented
Add more libraries We will continue to expand the coverage of the service and are currently in the process of adding new libraries
Improve deduplication We are gathering information about suggested matches on the service and will use this information to inform the development of an improved matching algorithm which should improve deduplication in the long term.
Improve holdings information Unfortunately, we have no control over this as we rely on the holdings information supplied to us by our Contributing Libraries
A bulk upload facility of ISSNs to enable scarcity checks We are in the process of developing a holdings comparison service which should assist with scarcity checking
UKRR libraries limit We are in the process of developing tailored or customised views onto SUNCAT, one of which could be for the UKRR.
Improve relevance ranking We will investigate possible improvements in this area.
Reinstate subject heading browsing This will be made available in an upcoming release
Provide better options for printing holdings dataPrinting results. It would be helpful if you could print a short summary with selected location details without the need to print irrelevant web-page data too. We will investigate possible improvements in this area.
Provide information about policies on ILL provision and licensing agreements We will investigate the possibility of pulling this information from sources such as KB+, while bearing in mind that recent changes to UK Copyright Law might make licensing information less relevant for ILL purposes.
Move the British Library code to appear beside the library name This information is displayed on the Library Information page which can be accessed by clicking on the Library name in the holdings display. We feel that adding this information directly to the holdings display could complicate and confuse the display for general users, but we will keep this request under consideration.
Split up electronic and print holdings or show more clearly We are working to improve how the format filtering works and will consider adding the format limit to the basic search page.

 

The results of the survey are very positive for the new SUNCAT service and indicate it now provides an overall improved platform from which to continue to develop the service further.

Unfortunately there were some initial problems with compatibility with older browsers, which the survey very usefully highlighted. Otherwise the responses to the new features are encouraging, with the vast majority of respondents finding the new service easy to use and an improvement on the original service.

Key features appear as those related to identifying, distinguishing between, limiting to or filtering out particular journal formats. This reflects a high number of users wanting to focus on non-electronic formats due to licence restrictions on providing copies from electronic formats. However, the additional information provided on the library pages and the links to local catalogues also proved popular.

We will give further consideration to each of the suggested improvements and where possible investigate developing these as part of future releases. In some cases the developments are already in the pipeline and the survey provides an additional confirmation of their potential usefulness.

SUNCAT is the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK. Visit the service at http://www.suncat.ac.uk

SUNCAT features at Interlend 2014

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent Interlend 2014 conference at the Carlton Highland Hotel in Edinburgh. Interlend is the annual conference for the Forum for Interlending and Information Delivery (FIL), which is an organisation for those involved in interlending and document supply, enabling them to exchange ideas and views and also to raise the profile of this area of work nationally and internationally.

This year’s conference took place on EDINA’s home turf in Edinburgh and featured an excellent range of talks focusing on marketing interlending services, developments to systems supporting interlending and case studies of evolving interlending services in practice. My highlights would have to include:

Anthony Brewerton, Head of Academic Services at the University of Warwick, who kicked off the conference with a lively and engaging tour of the key concepts to be considered when marketing and branding a library service. This included the ladder of loyalty – developing relationships with your customers, until they become advocates of, then champions of and finally partners in developing your service.

Ann Lees and Stephen Winch from NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services Group (NES KSG) recounted the trials of dealing with a “no copying� policy across NHS Scotland (NHSS), following the Scottish Government’s decision several years ago not to renew the then existing CLA licence. To compensate, a service was set up to provide copyright fee paid copies of material via the British Library. In order to streamline this process NES KSG utilised the British Library’s API to enable NHSS users to make requests via the Knowledge Network search platform. Users can run a search on the Knowledge Network and if no full text is available to them a link to login to the new Document Delivery service is displayed. The user is asked to fill in details about the reason for the request, preferred delivery option and then the order is placed via the British Library DDS API. NHSS librarians also receive email copies of the requests and go into the system to approve them. The system went live earlier this year and usage is gradually taking off. However, since June this year a revised CLA licence has been signed so restricted copying is now also available within NHSS.

I feared that a presentation on copyright could be rather dry but Emily Stannard, the Copyright & Compliance Officer from the University of Reading gave an engaging and informative update on the current status of key copyright developments in the UK, particularly the copyright exceptions which came into force at the start of June 2014. These include:

Supplying single copies of published works to (non-profit) libraries and to library users. No contract or individual licence can override this exception, which could have implications for those libraries looking to fulfil ILL requests via copies of articles from e-journals. Potentially libraries would not need to check individual licences before supplying copies. Emily advised us to keep our eyes peeled for more information on this topic.

Other exceptions include:

  • Preservation copying covers all works
  • No requirement for paper copyright declarations, an online declaration with checkbox or digital signature is now sufficient
  • Libraries can copy all types of work for persons doing non-commercial research/private study
  • Text and data mining for non-commercial purposes
  • Accessible copies for disabled people
  • Making works available on dedicated terminals (providing there is no contract saying you can’t)

Marjory Lobban’s (Document Delivery Supervisor at the University of Edinburgh) review of interlending at the University of Edinburgh was set against the backdrop of the changing environment the library is operating within the University, with more online courses, more distance learners, more students overall and reduced library sites.

Following a downward trend in ILL requests from the late 1990s to early 2000s with the emergence of e-journals, figures started to level out again when the University started using WorldShare in 2007 and started to increase in 2010 when the University started using Iliad leading to more exposure to overseas libraries accompanied by a move to online requesting, which streamlines the process for users and ILL staff. An increasing number of supplies to the University are coming from overseas libraries so ILL requests are now often sent straight overseas rather than to the British Library or other UK libraries. Lending to overseas is also increasing.

Future plans include looking at pay per view options where full text isn’t immediately available to the user. Purchasing items if cheaper than the interlending option and rebranding the ILL service.

I also gave a presentation focusing on the new SUNCAT service, including:

  • Background and context to the recent redevelopment
  • Highlighting the key features which can be found on the new service
  • Describing how SUNCAT can assist end users, library staff and in particular ILL staff
  • A live demo of the new service
  • An update on future plans for the service

Attending Interlend 2014 not only let me introduce the new SUNCAT interface to one of our valued user groups, but also helped to give me more information on what is happening and some key priorities in the world of interlending, all very helpful as we consider how to continue to develop the SUNCAT service.

The presentations for all the sessions will soon be available on the FIL website.

Problems using the new service on the IE8 browser

Following on from my last post about the SUNCAT survey, I would like to highlight how useful your feedback is to us, as it has helped as identify some major issues with using the service on the IE8 browser. Once we realised that there was a problem our developers immediately started to investigate the cause and fairly quickly identified a solution. We have implemented a new release of the service adding in the appropriate fix so any IE8 users should now notice a significant improvement. However, if you are still experiencing problems please get in touch with us via the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk

Huge apologies to anyone who has experienced these problems so far!

Finding help and information on SUNCAT

We hope you are finding the new look SUNCAT easy and intuitive to use, but just in case you do experience any problems or are puzzled by anything, we wanted to highlight the following resources:

Context sensitive help is available throughout the service from the “Help” link in the footer of all the pages.

Clicking on the Help & Support link in the main navigation bar along the top of all the pages takes you to a page which includes:

If you can’t find the answer to your query in one of the above please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via the “Contact” link in the footer of all the SUNCAT pages or by emailing the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

 

Your Feedback is Requested on the New Look SUNCAT

Following on from the launch of the new look SUNCAT as the primary service in March, and before finally switching off the old service , we would like to gather your feedback via a short survey

Your input is very valuable to us as it is integral to the planning of our future developments and priorities. You can find summary reports of previous user satisfaction surveys and the resulting planned actions, many of which have already been implemented, on the EDINA website.

We would be really grateful for your time and comments and would also encourage you to circulate the survey details as widely as possible.

The survey will be available until Friday 27th June 2014.

You can also continue to email any comments to edina@ed.ac.uk or to use the “Contact” link at the bottom of all the SUNCAT pages.

Thank you in advance!