An Electronic Online Access Showroom for the New Acquisitions of the Library of the University of Macedonia
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050410526484 |
| Published date | 01 January 2004 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| Pages | 22-29 |
| Author | Filippos Kolovos,Stella Papargeris,Elisabeth Tsanaktsidou |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
An Electronic Online Access Showroom for the
New Acquisitions of the Library of the University
of Macedonia
Filippos Kolovos, Stella Papargeris and Elisabeth Tsanaktsidou
22 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 1 2004, pp. 22-29, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050410526484
Introduction
The up-to-date p ractice that is
followed by many libraries for the
briefing of their users on their new
acquisitions is the formation of one or
more special bookstands (or
showrooms), where the newly acquired
books are placed for a short period of
time (one to three months). However,
due to space limitations in the library of
the University of Macedonia in
Thessaloniki, Gre ece, the formation of
such a physical showroom was
unfeasible. This resulted in a situation
where members of the academic staff of
the University proposed for the
enrichment of the library's collection,
books that had already been acquired.
This was conside red as evidence o f
insufficiently introducing new book
acquisitions. Moreover, the publication
of a printed informative newsletter
announcing the new acquisitions, on the
one hand, could not be supported
satisfactorily fromthe precedent and the
actual automation system of the library
and, on the other hand, it was considered
economically disadvantageous by the
administrationof the University.
For the reasons given above, the
most appropriate method for the prompt
briefing of the library's users was
considered to be the usage of online
communication technologies and the
Internet, for the creation of an
electronic showroom that will contain
the most important new books of the
library's collection.
Regarding the selection of the
showroom's books, it will be carried
out based on certain criteria such as the
timeliness of the book's subject, how
recent and well-known is the
publication, its expected usage (based
also on the experience of the circulation
and the information departments of the
library) and the uniqueness of the
acquisition (e.g. business studies). Also,
during the selection process, special
emphasis will be given on selecting
books that, in total, will cover most of
the library's subjects without being
confined in a specific area.
The electronic showroom is included
in the project ``PLOEGIS: from
information to knowledge: aid of
disposal of electronic content and
benefit of informative education in the
library of the University of
Macedonia'', which is financed by the
second Operational Programme for
Education and Initial Vocational
Training (OPEIVT II).
Structure and architecture of the
showroom
The structure of the showroom
combines simplicity with usefulness in
an efficient and a dynamic way. It
consists of a set of HTML pages
through which the users have the ability
to browse the electronic catalog of the
new book acquisitions, to retrieve more
information about these acquisitions
and to browse their table of contents, to
make a reservation for one or more
book titles and to search the
showroom's database through a simple
search engine. The latter allows
searching by keywords, author name(s),
ISBN, title, subject and publisher. Also,
every HTML page of the showroom is
available in two languages, Greek and
English, between which the user can be
transferred at any time.
The electronic catalog
The first page that appears to the
end-users is the electronic catalog,
containing a list of all the new book
acquisitions of the showroom. Each
item (record) in the catalog's list has the
form of a hyperlink that leads to more
information concerning that item. The
records of the catalog are grouped in
pages, with ten records per page, in
order to make navigation and
previewing easier. The user can
navigate through the records with an
auxiliary navigation bar, which allows
navigation to the first, the last, the
following and the previous page of
records.
The displayed records can be sorted
by title, author name, or date of
insertion in the database. The user can
choose his or her preferred sorting
method by clicking on one of the
provided hyperlinks (title, author and
date (see Figure 1)).
Also, every Web page is equipped
with a central navigation bar, which
provides the users with the ability to go
one step back in their navigation, to go
to the showroom's search engine and to
change between the Greek and the
English languages. Figure 1 provides an
illustration of the electronic catalog.
The book description page
Through the electronic catalog, the
user can retrieve more information
concerning one or more books with a
simple mouse-click on their (hyper-
linked) titles.On clicking on a book title,
the user is redirected to the book
description page, which contains some
basic bibliographic information
concerning that book, including its
classificationand ISBN numbers, its title
and subtitle, up to two subjects
concerning its content, its author
name(s), its publisher and its year of
publication. Additionally, the user can
see the cover and the backside of the
book, navigate in its table of contents
and, if desired, send a book reservation
request. Figure 2 provides an illustration
of the book descriptionpage.
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