Changes to Enterprise - with the customer in mind

As flagged earlier, we've been actively considering where our interface with the customer falls short & how we can improve what we currently offer.  We've had a few breakthroughs that I'd like to share.  While these are still in final test phase, and will be implemented in April and May, I think they're worth documenting.

We are about to make three changes to Enterprise, two of which will become standard across all libraries' Enterprise sites & one that allows for each library to decide how it will implement the change.

The "standard" changes relate to 1) making additional e-content (Zinio & Lynda.com) discoverable through Enterprise, and 2) making a local South Australian community information database available in Enterprise.  The 3rd change provides a little more nuance around increasing the amount of local content that is displayed in many searches undertaken by library customers.  Give the complexity of explaining these 3 changes I've decided to restrict this post to the 1st change we're making and then explain the other two changes in another post or two.

Zinio and Lynda.com discoverability in Enterprise:  These two products are currently not discoverable using the SirsiDynix eResource Central (eRC) product.  We've heard that it will be some time until these two products will be discoverable in Enterprise through a metadata harvest through eRC.  So we've decided to implement a "workaround" using the functionality of Portfolio - the digital asset product we also subscribe to from SirsiDynix. 

James Kemperman (of PLS) has created digital objects in Portfolio, that are then harvested by Enterprise, and display in people's search terms.  Our network subscribes to approximately 400 different e-magazine titles through Zinio, so James has begun creating a record for each title, that then become discoverable.  For example when someone searches for something like Organic Gardener, in their search results they will see this record. See the image below. (And I apologize for the quality of the pics - they're screenshots that don't scale very well in the limited functionality of this blog software.) 

If you click the link, you will note that the hard copies of the ABC Organic Gardener display for various libraries, along with the e-magazine record. 

The record is not perfect, because we can't mask the second URL in the record - that just links to the cover picture.  However we're hopeful that by adding the "ACCESS HERE" in front of the 1st URL customers will quickly get the hang of how it works.  Another "downside" is that the record for this e-magazine is shown as an "asset" in the search facets on the left hand side, along with all other Portfolio records, rather than being included in the list of Magazines.  So someone who limits their searches to magazines will not see the e-ones. 

And once a customer clicks on the record in the list they will see this image:

This provides all the information about how to download the magazine to various devices & how to get the App for whatever your device is.

As I've said this is a work-around - not perfect, but an improvement.  We'll be adding records for all titles in coming weeks.

Lynda.com: is a bit like Zinio, however the Lynda.com subscription provides almost countless courses & we don't want to include everything, as it will clutter the database unnecessarily.  So we're looking at usage stats to include courses that have proved popular in the past, as well as asking library staff who are doing training in digital literacy to nominate courses that they would like to see highlighted for customers.  That way, the trainers can point their trainees to Enterprise and get them to find the Lynda.com courses that are part of the course they're doing.

An example of this is seen here, where if a person was to search for javascript in Enterprise, one of he records they would find is a link through to a course.  Below is an image of what the record looks like in Enterprise.  

You will note that we have included the instructions "login using your library card number and PIN" in this record, so people get the idea that it isn't a book or DVD.  Clicking on this link will take the customer out of Enterprise and to the Lynda.com login screen.

Hopefully this temporary work-around will increase the discovery and use of these two e-resources while we wait for eRC to catch up.  As we're already paying for the online products it makes sense to find any possible way to maximize their use.

I'll post on the other two changes to Enterprise in the near future.