I’m pleased to announce that a new version of Prism is now available for you to preview, together with a new release of the Admin Console.

Community Collaboration

This Prism release brings the first of the community collaboration features: user contributed star ratings.

The ability to rate an item gives the user a basic level of active participation in the catalogue, allowing them to express their response to an item. The display of ratings in the catalogue serves as a guide to other users in a way that is familiar from many other places on the web.

The average rating is displayed in results and in the item detail page. You can click on it to add your own rating – you are invited to login first, then taken back where you were. On the item detail page you also get a blank set of stars on an item yet to be rated.

Once logged in, ratings can be added on both the results page and the full detail page by clicking on the number of stars you wish to give the item. You can do this whether or not the item has been rated already. Ratings can also be altered if you change your mind at a later date – the new rating replaces an older rating to prevent any one user gaming the system.

We’re aggregating ratings across libraries in two groups: academic libraries and public libraries. All ratings in your library sector will be displayed in your catalogue, giving you the greater scope and refinement of the larger scale. The average rating for an item in a library sector is displayed.

This is just the first part of a larger scheme of work around adding community features to the catalogue which will include enabling users to see and manage their contributed content.

Ratings is an optional feature, allowing you to introduce it when you feel you are ready. We’ve added a new ‘Community Features’ section to the latest release of the Admin Console, also released today, which allows you to turn the feature on or off quickly and easily. To switch on ratings, under Community Features check the Enable ratings box and click the ‘Update’ button. You also need to reset the cache for your tenancy: in a new browser window or tab run your equivalent of this: prism.talis.com/demo/mytenancy-sandbox/resettenantcache.

We always recommend that you do this first for your sandbox tenancy. All Admin Console settings apply to both the preview and live environments, so when this release of Prism goes live, any tenancy where ratings are enabled will have the feature in the live service as well as in the preview.

Electronic Location Links

This release also brings a small change to the data model to improve our handling of Electronic Location and Access (856) fields. We’re ensuring that we extract the relevant information from the field, as well as tidying up how they are displayed on the item details page. This is the first part of a larger theme of work around improving access and discovery of e-resources within Prism.

Admin Console

The new release of the Admin Console brings several key improvements, including faster browsing of files in the theme section. We’ve also taken on board all of the feedback about improving the experience when you just want to upload a single file and have remodelled this section to allow browsing through the folders that make up your theme, with uploads being stored in the folder you have active. Folders are marked as “folder” in the type column and can be navigated to by clicking on their name; a breadcrumb trail is provided to allow you to navigate back up the folder hierarchy. You cannot add or rename folders within the console: the folder structure must be created separately, zipped and uploaded – so if you’d like to add a new folder the best way is to download a theme backup, add the new folder (and files) and then use the upload zip function.

One further new area in the Admin Console is ‘Layout Modules’ allowing HTML5 rendering and the mobile interface to be enabled. If you’d like to enable the mobile interface, both of these need to be checked, but you can also just enable HTML5 if you want to take advantage of more modern web browser features without offering the mobile interface. These are both optional features as they can require a few tweaks to be made to your tenancy theme to ensure your design stays consistent. As with other features you can make adjustments in your sandbox before switching them on in your live tenancy. If you already have the Mobile interface enabled then both will be switched on by default, otherwise both will be switched off.

We’re planning on releasing these changes to the live service within the next week, so would really appreciate everyone trying these new features on their tenancy.

As usual, you can preview this release by inserting ‘/demo/’ after the prism.talis.com part of your URL and before the name of your tenancy, e.g. http://prism.talis.com/demo/mytenancy/. If you have your own host name, to see the preview you must use prism.talis.com/ instead. The preview enables you to search your live data and access your live Local Data Services (e.g. for availability, renewals and reservations) using the new version of Prism. You can also use it with your sandbox tenancy.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch; you can comment here on this blog, on the Prism forum and Prism Ideas or contact your account manager or the Prism team directly.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 13th February 2012 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Prism developments and review the Prism Roadmap, as well as giving you an opportunity to raise any specific questions that you may have.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

I’m pleased to announce that a new version of Prism is now available for you to preview.  This is a maintenance release addressing a number of issues:

• Disappearing lists
• Blocked borrowers get an error page when they try to sign in. In this release they will get a specific page with configurable text to say that they are blocked from signing in and to ask library staff. The longer term plan for blocked borrowers (i.e. those who have exceeded a limit on fines or overdues)  is to allow them to sign in but to disallow renewal and reservation, with an alert to this in their account.
• Exporting lists as CSV sometimes has wrong data in the ISBN/ISSN column
• Mobile Prism doesn’t switch to landscape on Android HD
• Page navigation from the foot of the page to the next page displays the bottom instead of top of the next page
• The standard number (ISBN/ISSN) of an additional physical form (e.g. electronic version) recorded in MARC field 776 will now be indexed.

The purpose of the preview is to allow you to explore and become familiar with the new features before they are released to your users, and to ensure that everything is working correctly. As usual we strongly recommend that you check the preview of your catalogue carefully to make sure your styling displays as expected, including your Mobile Prism.

If you have any issues or concerns please raise a  Support case. You can also comment on the release by adding a comment on this blog post or emailing me or contacting your Account Manager.

We will release this version to the live service next week. – Update: This is now scheduled for Monday 28th November.

To access the preview, insert ‘/demo/’ after the prism.talis.com part of your URL and before the name of your tenancy, e.g. http://prism.talis.com/demo/examplecat/. This enables you to search your live data and access your live Local Data Services (e.g. for availability, renewals and reservations) using the new version of Prism. You can also use it with your sandbox tenancy.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 12th December 2011 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries  click here to register.

Academic libraries  click here to register.

In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Prism developments and review the Prism Roadmap, as well as giving you an opportunity to raise any specific questions that you may have.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 24th October 2011 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Prism developments and review the Prism Roadmap, as well as giving you an opportunity to raise any specific questions that you may have.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

I’m pleased to announce the release of the latest version of Prism to the live service last night. This version has been available for preview since 5th September and was described in detail in the preview release notice. The main inclusions are:

• Prism Mobile Interface, making your Prism catalogue into a mobile ‘web app’, optimised for viewing on all modern smart phones
• Improvements to CSS for themes, optimising performance
• Support for additional LDS authentication methods
• Tiny images on account pages, for more items displayed per screen

The Mobile Interface requires a modification to the tenancy configuration and we recommend you test this on your sandbox tenancy before putting it live. If you raise a service request we will add the configuration to your tenancy as soon as possible.

The improvements to CSS for themes will be switched on together with the Mobile Interface. It is being managed this way because there may be some issues with the display arising from the interaction with your local customised styling. Introducing it on the sandbox tenancy first, together with the Mobile Interface, will allow any such issues to be addressed before putting it live.

You can read much more about the Mobile Interface and the CSS improvements in the posts on Mobile interface configuration and Prism 3 calling: introducing our mobile device interface

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on this release please get in touch; you can comment here or on the forums or Prism Ideas or contact your account manager or the Prism team directly.

I’m pleased to announce that the upgrade to BDS cover images is now live as the default in Prism catalogues. Today’s switch to BDS was enabled in the latest release of Prism last week and is the first step in implementing an agreement with BDS to provide Prism users with extended enrichments.

Details of the agreement for enhanced enrichments from BDS  were given in a webinar last month which is available as a video.

BDS images are now provided by default but you can opt for an alternative supplier.

With the switch to BDS you will see
- more cover images for books
- cover images for audio and video resources where your record includes the International Article Number (EAN) or Universal Product Code (UPC). This gives considerable extra scope to the coverage of images in your catalogue.

The BDS images are generally larger, giving greater clarity and detail, because the width is fixed to fill the space available, whereas previously the longest edge was a fixed length.

Some good examples of the extra coverage in Southwark Libraries’ catalogue:
- New acquisitions in the Music Catalogue
- New acquisitions in the Film Catalogue
- Lord of the rings (books, CD, Blu-ray …)

Smaller images will be coming in a future release for the mobile interface and for lists in the My Account area.

I’m pleased to announce the release of the latest version of Prism to the live service. This version has been available for preview since 25th July and was described in detail in the preview release notice. The main inclusions are:

- Improved display of formats in initial results display for Semantic Data Model records
- Support for Audio Visual (non-ISBN) cover images
- Addition of two new theme fragments

The improved display of formats is dependent on having implemented the new version of MarcGrab, which is currently being rolled out.

We announced in a  Prism blog post and elsewhere that we have formed an agreement with BDS to provide Prism users with extended enrichments. That is enabled by this release but the switch to BDS will be made separately later. As stated in recent newsletters, please let us know by 15th August if you wish to stay with Nielson Book Data. Please contact your account manager if you wish to discuss Prism enrichments further.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on this release please get in touch; you can comment here on the blog, on the forums and Prism Ideas or contact your account manager or the Prism team directly.

The enthusiastic use made of the Prism Ideas forum by a large proportion of Prism customers is very encouraging and it is proving valuable as  guide to priorities for development. This enthusiasm has also been manifested in feedback on the forum itself, primarily asking for more votes to make it easier to add more ideas. You need a spare vote to be able to add an idea and temporarily borrowing a vote from another idea is a cumbersome process. More votes may also give further discrimination amongst the most popular ideas.

In the light of this feedback and having reviewed the effect of twenty votes in the Alto forum, we have today increased the number of votes that a user can cast in the Prism Ideas forum to twenty.

To date, fifty-eight ideas have been submitted to the Prism forum. We’ve completed eight ideas and another seven are either planned or work has started. When an idea is completed, the votes are returned for re-use.

Fifty-three customers have registered for Prism Ideas and forty-nine have voted. That’s out of fifty-four customers who are live with Prism and around another ten preparing to go live.

We’re spending at least twenty percent of each development period on ideas from the forum, and we’re looking forward to seeing more ideas and clearer trends from the increase in votes.

The latest release of Prism, when supplied with data from the new MarcGrab, re-models title and statement of responsibility information from MARC field 245, analysing the different kinds of data that MARC often lumps together, to make better use of it. One benefit of this is that any number-and-name-of-part information embedded in subfield $c (statement of responsibility, etc) is now appended to the main title so that you can see all of the precise title information together. Another benefit is the display of the statement of responsibility.

Historically, a General Material Designator (GMD) has been added to title information to give some indication of the kind of material of the item. However, its general nature has always been unsatisfactory because users want more precise information, and this is why, in the new cataloguing rules, RDA, the GMD is dropped in favour of more specific alternatives. For these reasons we have omitted the GMD.

A better alternative to the GMD is accurate format information, presented so the user can see at a glance what it is. The format is already in a regular position at the beginning of a line, but to improve its display we’re proposing the following changes:

• Move the summary snippet to the foot of the entry
• Select the most specific format term, where more than one is currently given, according to a preference list. For example, select ‘eBook’ from ‘Electronic resource, eBook, Book’
• Display the selected format in bold
• Place the edition statement and the year of publication, in that order, after the language, to give more prominence to these important elements
• Change the label ‘Published’ to ‘Publisher’ and unbold it by default, so that it does not distract attention from the earlier elements.

It is posible to hide the language and publisher elements with styling tools (a simple update to you site.css file). It is also possible to hide just the default language, that is, the language of your catalogue, usually ‘English’. For details of how to apply these changes, or to request us to do it for you, please raise a Support case.

This proposal is only about results entries, not the Item Detail page. There are other issues and ideas for the Item Detail page, which will be addressed later.

We’ve put together some examples. Please click on the image to get a full size view. Cover images have been omitted from the examples but they would be there, as now, in the implementation.

We’d love to hear your views on this proposal. Please comment on this blog post, or you can email me terry.willan@capita.co.uk. As soon as a favourable consensus is clear we’ll start work on this with a view to getting it into the next release of Prism.