From: Frances Dean McNamara <fdmcnama@UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject: New catalog at University of ChicagoWe have a new catalog interface at University of Chicago that we are
currently testing. It is based on Aquabrowser Library of Medialab and
the library has named it LENS to distinguish it from the existing
library catalog.http://lens.lib.uchicago.edu/
We have added EADs from a local system, a crawl of the website (which is
still being refined, we are getting too much), data from our link
resolver and eresource database lists. We are also experimenting with
loading Oxford DNB. You have to search a last name of a British author
to see that, try just “austen”. Of course you’ll only see those
articles if you subscribe to that db.
We have loaded LC Authorities, so if you search “mountain biking” you
will see it automatically expand the search to the authorized heading
“all-terrain biking”. Some See Also’s appear in the thesaurus part of
the “word cloud”.
We can add hints and have done so for some hard-to-find titles our
bibliographers have suggested like “Pravda”
Medialab has made a number of modifications for us including the ability
to remove or keep facets in the breadcrumb trail. We worked with them
to get the LC Classification refine. We are still working on fitting
our collections in correctly.
This seems a good list to report availability of this catalog, since it
is intended to go beyond the traditional. We have a long list of
potential sources of data that we want to try loading in to see if they
increase the effectiveness of the catalog. We consider the current site
“beta” and will continue to change it until our “production” date in
mid-January.
Frances McNamara
University of Chicago
