Helping a patron find books in Russian

A question came up recently on the NHAIS-ILL listserv about finding books written in Russian. This is not a question that comes up a lot for most libraries, but it is something that is easy to do in NHU-PAC.


To find BOOKS in RUSSIAN, here is what you do:

1- Go to the NHU-PAC web site.

2- Go to the Advanced Searching tab, then click on the Monographs subtab.

3-Type an asterisk (*) into the box next to "Title includes" to get ANY book.

4- From the dropdown list below where it says "Limits" select Russian.

5 - Click on the red arrow, or press the Enter key, to execute your search.


If you wanted your results to appear in a particular order, sorted by publication date for example, you could choose that option from the "Sorting" drop-down menu at the bottom of the search screen, or apply the sorting criteria to your result set using the boxes at the top right corner of the results window.


This same process will work for any of the 27 languages that appears in the limit list. The list was created based on which languages were actually represented in the NHU-PAC when we set up the system.

If you are looking for materials in a language that is not in the list you can do that too, it just takes different steps:


1- Use the OCLC MARC Code List for Languages to identify the MARC Code for the language you are interested in. Let's say we want to know if anyone has materials in Abenaki. The code for that is the collective code for Algonquian languages (Other) which is alg.

2- Go to the NHU-PAC web site.

3- Go to the Advanced Searching tab, you will be on the Boolean subtab which is what you want.

4- Below the words "Search by:" there are a series of dropdown boxes. From the first one of these boxes select MARC Language Code then type your code (alg in my example) into the search box to the right of the dropdown.

5 - Click on the red arrow, or press the Enter key, to execute your search.

So are there any items in Abenaki? Try the search and find out!

Happy Halloween from NHSL

November Van Delivery News

The New Hampshire State Library will be closed the following days in November:

Tuesday, November 11, 2008 in observance of Veterans' Day.
Thursday, November 27, 2008 in observance of Thanksgiving and Friday, November 28, 2008, the day after Thanksgiving.

There will be NO VAN DELIVERY on those 3 days.

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Some libraries may be closed on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, Election Day. The NH State Library is OPEN that day and van routes will be running normal schedules. If your library is going to be closed that day, please let your van driver know, or e-mail me diana.decota@dcr.nh.gov so that I may let the van driver know.

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For a complete list of all of the holidays the State Library is closed, please visit http://www.nh.gov/nhsl/services/librarians/van_delivery/instructions.html (the van delivery instructions) and scroll down to "NO Van Service".

If for any other reason (e.g. bad weather) van service on a particular route(s) does not operate, libraries will be notified via an e-mail message. If your library does not receive van service on a particular day, please check your e-mail before calling the State Library.

Diana

Data mining

Recently, data mining from several sources has been directed at the iPAC server. The first target was Gilford Public Library’s catalog. The result of this effort was that Gilford’s iPAC was brought to its knees. As a result of this problem, SirsiDynix has given me a range of IP addresses to have blocked. There are three possible miners working in the server. They have trusted names like Google, msn, and slurp. Slurp is apparently part of Yahoo. Although there are legitimate reasons why those search engines would be looking at New Hampshire catalogs, the result of the thousands of searches executed by these bots is equivalent to a denial of service attack. The ranges of IPs being blocked are rather large. If you know anything about IP address formats you can see that there are thousands of potential addresses being block. They are:
Google bot: 66.249.64.0 66.249.95.255
MSN bot: 66.55.0.0 66.55.255.255
Yahoo Slurp! bot: 67.195.0.0 67.195.71.137.

NHU-PAC brief outage Tue. Oct 21 4 p.m.

The NHU-PAC will go offline for a few minutes this afternoon (Tuesday, October 21) for server maintenance. The outage will start at 4 p.m. and should be over fairly quickly.

NHAIS-L, NHAIS-ILL server outage early Wed. a.m.

The state's maillist2 server will be offline for maintenance early Wednesday morning, October 22. If you send a message to NHAIS-L, NHAIS-ILL, or other lists hosted on maillist2 between 4 and 7 a.m. on Wednesday, it may bounce back to you. The NH Office of Information Technology tells us we shouldn't see any changes once the server is back online at 7 a.m.

Gathering Blogger Statistics

As librarians, statistics are a big part of our jobs. You might be wondering how to get statistics for your Blogger blog. According to this article from the Google Analytics Blog, having access to your Blogger site statistics will *soon* be easier than ever. However, this feature has not yet been implemented. So how do you gather statistics for your blog?

The answer is pretty simple: Sign up for Google Analytics. Here are the "in-a-nut-shell" instructions:

1. Sign up for Google Analytics.
2. Tell Google the URL of the blog.
3. Tell Google who you are.
   
4. Copy some HTML code that Google generates for you.
5. Paste this code into your blog's HTML code.

Read on for the full instructions... (Click on any of the small images to see a larger, clearer version of the image.)

1. Visit Google Analytics and sign up for an account using the same Google or Gmail account you use to sign into your Blogger account. (Remember, Google owns Blogger.)
   
   
2. Provide your Blogger URL. The account name should automatically fill in. Set the time zone, if needed.
   
   
3. Tell Google a little about yourself.
4. Copy the code generated for you by Google Analytics.
   
   
5. Open your Blogger blog.
6. Navigate to Layout >> Edit HTML.
7. Scroll to the bottom of the HTML until you find the HTML tag for closing the body.
   
   
8. Paste the code directly into the space right before the "close body" tag.
   
   
9. After pasting the code, be sure to save the template.
10. Check that your blog looks healthy and normal. (Always a good thing to do after editing the HTML!)
    
11. Navigate back over to your Google Analytics account and check the status of the blog.
    
    
    
12. Most likely you'll get the following message: "Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now." Expect it to take a while for the statistics to show.
13. That's it! Now you just need to remember to check your blog stats as needed.

A Sample View of the Page Analysis:

Technology Marketing

How does your library market technology? Do you provide computer help? Offer demos on using the downloadable audiobooks? Help people set up email accounts? It would appear that personal tech-assistance might be the vital component in technology marketing.

Take a minute to read the following article from TeleRead, a blog dedicated to e-books. The article is about a new Borders concept store that features a nearly empty technology section, void of customer (or staff) presence.

“If you build it, they will come” only works in the movies. If they really want to succeed Borders needs to do something beyond just making all this technology available in the store.

http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/10/12/where-is-everybody/

It sounds like a page from our book, doesn't it? Just offering the technology might not be enough for some people. The education and training we, as librarians, can offer our patrons is just as important as the technology itself.

If you have questions about new technologies or need help getting your staff trained, let me know! I am always happy to work with you on custom technology training. Email me at: bobbilee.slossar at dcr (dot) nh (dot) gov