Dear Colleagues



Helen Beton recently emailed the list to seek feedback from other institutions regarding JISC Historic Books and concerns raised by users. Helen has kindly shared the feedback she received with us along with a list of the main issues raised.



We would like to take to take this opportunity to share with this wider audience some of the actions we are taking in response to the concerns raised and to let you know that many of the issues identified are already on our development log which is being discussed by the JISC Historic Books Advisory Board next Monday or have been resolved.



Just before Christmas a number of important enhancements were made to the platform as a result of feedback from users following the August launch. The most important of these was the advanced search functionality which was upgraded and now enables users to search as expected, including by ESTC number, and is returning reliable results from all three collections. The full EEBO mark records were also ingested and indexed ensuring that all the EEBO content is searchable and we implemented the save and download feature so that users can now download, save and print high-res version of the scanned images and the associated OCR text where this is available.



We are currently working on the following enhancements which are due for release in the coming weeks:



* Exact phrase searching - expected to go live this week. This will enable phrase searching in the advanced search that allows searching across stop words.



* Open URL - expected in February 2012. This feature will allow direct linking to specific books. Within the interface you will also be able to generate a URL to give to students linking to a specific page of a specific book if so required.



* PDF upgrade - expected in February 2012. Some of the titles are extremely large files and therefore the download speed can be quite slow, especially as they are high-res scanned images. We are upgrading the PDF download functionality (behind the scenes) which will speed up the generation of PDF files.





On the 23rd January the JISC Historic Books Advisory Board is meeting and we will be discussing and prioritising further enhancements which we have been gathering from your emails, the board members and through my visits. Below we have commented on the additional issues noted in Helen's email to let you know if it is on our development log - or if it is something that we are aware of but perhaps have limited control over:



* The Optical character recognition (OCR) of the text is poor:

The OCR of the British Library content and the ECCO content and the TCP'd texts within EEBO are exactly as provided by content owner and do not differ to what is available on their platforms. The quality of the OCR in particular is indeed of variable quality and many academics will be aware of this issue as it is machine generated from the scanned digital images. The JISC Historic Books Advisory Board will be discussing a new project to help improve the quality of the OCR at its next meeting.



* As text has been scanned in two pages at a time it is not possible to zoom in:

* Magnification range is very limited

The scanned images are as provided by the content owners. For the EEBO titles, we are aware that there is an issue with the zoom functionality on the platform and it is on our development log as is the need to have a more flexible magnification range for all titles. While we fix this issue, it is possible for users to download these items / required pages as PDF documents and then zoom.



* No browse facility, e.g. list of authors:

This is on our development log for the Advisory Board to comment on.



* Useful 'thumbnail' option provided by ProQuest isn't replicated in JISC Historic Books:

This is on our development log for the Advisory Board to comment on.



* Useful details of ESTC number, edition and provenance of the copy available via EEBO isn't replicated in JISC Historic Books:

Following ingest of the MARC records for the EEBO titles prior to Christmas, users are able to view this information via the 'more info' drop down on the search results page, and also when within the book viewer.



* The order in which works by a given author appear doesn't seem to be consistent:

On the left had side in the result screen you can sort how the results are displayed. The default option is most relevant, but date order - for example - can be selected instead. If this does not meet requirements, please let us know and we will add it onto the development log.



* The inability to conduct exact name searches for author or search for a particular year rather than year range:

Advanced search allows for exact name searches. At the moment you can search for a range of two years (i.e 1669-1670), but we will add this onto the development log and discuss with the Advisory Board next week.



* Assistive technology compatibility issues:

We would like to hear more about the issues regarding this and welcome your help in testing it with various assistive technologies



* Interface not intuitive:

This is rather hard to comment on, as it has been designed to support all types of users and to be as simple as possible. However, further user testing is planned following developments. More specific comments are welcome.



* Help screen is unsatisfactory:

We are working on a number of items to help improve the information available to help users. Again, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.



* Navigating around the text is limited:

We would require more in-depth information on what is required here before we can spec up a solution.



We recognise that migrating users from one platform to another is a difficult task and that some users may not like the new one or recognise some of the advantages of the new platform over the ones they are used to using. We also acknowledge that it has not been a smooth transition but we hope you now feel more assured knowing that we are aware of the issues that have been raised and are working with the Advisory Board to prioritise these for implementation.



We hope that this helps decision making regarding joining the service and current subscriptions as per Helen's first email. Please do continue to let us have your comments, both positive and negative, and we will do our best to accommodate your requirements and those of your users.



Kind Regards

Scott


Scott Gibbens
JISC Collections Service Representative
JISC Collections

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Mobile: 07585967685
www.jisc-collections.ac.uk<http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/>


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