New graphic interface to electronic reference books
- From: "Ballard, Terry Prof." <Terry.Ballard@[redacted]>
- Subject: New graphic interface to electronic reference books
- Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:57:14 -0400
Here is something that I've been developing over the summer that may be
of some interest to this group. We subscribe to about 100 electronic
reference books through Gale, Greenwood and Stat-Ref. We passed the
point where we could just add the individual titles to the web page -
just too many. We have all of these linked in our OPAC, but they tend to
get buried because there is so much else there. The VERSO graphic
interface tries to simulate the experience of walking into a library,
browsing the shelves and picking out a book. You can see the
nearly-complete project at:
http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/verso/versomain.html
Most of these are subscription databases, but the ADAM encyclopedia in
the Medical shelf is an NLM project, so you can take that all the way.
Since this is all built by hand, I'm hoping to eventually find a way,
probably using XML, to convert data from spreadsheets and have the spine
records and shelves automatically compile.
Terry
Terry Ballard, Automation Librarian
The Arnold Bernhard Library, Quinnipiac University
275 Mt. Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT, 06518
Telephone 203-582-8945 Fax 203-582-3451
Email: terry.ballard@[redacted]
Web Page: http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard
Blog: http://librariansonedge.blogspot.com
"Reality is just a theory."