Those working on SUNCAT are very excited with the progress which has been made with the development of the new interface and we are delighted to announce that it is now available at:
Earlier posts on this blog highlighted some of the improved functionality which will be available on the new interface.
The new interface has been developed on an open-source search platform, Solr, which has provided us with the flexibility to provide new and enhanced functionality, including:
· Improved pre-search library and geographic limits: enabling you to focus your search to see only holdings from a particular group of libraries or from a particular geographic location.
· The ability to combine library, location, format, language and year of
publication pre-search limits to create very specific focused searches.
· The introduction of post-search filters: enabling you to narrow your
search results by holding library, format, subject, author, date of first
publication, place of publication and language.
· More integrated information about our Contributing Libraries: from the holdings display you can link to the library website, contact details, Google directions, the British Library code (for inter-library loans) and the date when the library’s data was last updated in SUNCAT.
· Links to the local catalogues of holding libraries: also available on the
holdings display, enabling you to check information directly at the source.
· A new look for the interface incorporating a map showing all the various locations of our Contributing Libraries.
To allow everyone time to become familiar with the new interface it will run in parallel with the existing Aleph interface for a period of about 6 months. We hope that everyone will find it easy and straightforward to use the new interface. Help text has been provided and we will be making available some ‘Quick Start’ guides and other documentation. In addition, it is planned to run a series of Workshops in March/April 2014 to demonstrate the functionality available in the new interface and to share with all participants the plans for further developments.
In due course we will be asking for feedback on the new interface but in the meantime we will be delighted to receive any questions and/or comments.
Please send these to:
edina@ed.ac.uk
