Unlocking the Door

Bobbi Fox, Library Technology Services, Harvard University, bobbi_fox@harvard.edu

Gloria Korsman, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University, gloria_korsman@harvard.edu

This is a Harvard Library Lab project, funded with the generous support of the Arcadia Fund

Student-centered design

Student view

Student comments

• Awkward interface, too many clicks
• Login to LMS from "never" to "daily"
• Prefer to search for titles, rather than browse lists
• Students used OPAC more often than LMS to locate reserves

Student FAQs

• I need something on reserve, but the book is checked out to someone.
• The professor said that Peter Brown's essay is online, but I don't know where to look.
• I'd like to see the book for Prof. X's class ...
• I am auditing a class and don't have access to the course page to find the reserves ...

An ideal library homepage

Course Reserves Unleashed!

• A librarian-technologist collaboration.
• Streamlines student access to course reserves.
• Frees up data so libraries may present course reserves on websites.
• Present data in multiple places, wherever students expect to see it.
• No authentication required to search bibliographic data.

Getting from there to ecru

Implementation

• Solr 4 is used as a NoSQL database
• Both course information and reserve item information is expressed in a single schema file
• Yeah, it's done in java. I know that means I'm not one of the Kewl Kidz
• The ecru repo on GitHub github.com/harvard-library/ecru has means of loading data via CSV file(s)
• Reserves data is loaded from the Reserves Tool via a cron job that runs periodically

Thank you. Questions?

• Ecru on github: github.com/harvard-library/ecru
• Bobbi Fox
  • bobbi_fox@harvard.edu
  • @bobbi_fox_SMR
• Gloria Korsman
• gloria_korsman@harvard.edu