[OPLINTECH] New EBSCO Features Coming This Winter

[Joel Husenits]

Attention Ohio librarians -

EBSCOhost will be rolling out some new features to their interface this
winter.  Their announcement message is below.  Of particular interest is
the new visual search, which provides a graphical interface to help focus
search results, and clustering, which provides quick access to result
subjects.

To explore these changes before they are made in the OPLIN statewide
EBSCOhost profiles, visit
http://product-view.epnet.com/webauth/login.asp?user=demo&password=password&profile=ehost.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Feb 15, 2006 2:26 PM
Subject: EBSCO Support Case #109151 Feature Utilization: Banding,
Tupelo/Clustering/EBSCOhost Connection

Key features of the Winter EBSCOhost Release include:

•Visual Search (On) delivers a graphically rich, extremely efficient
visual searching alternative, available in addition to EBSCO's popular
Basic and Advanced Searching modes.

•EBSCOhost Clustering (On) displays links of search results sorted by
subject, in addition to regular Result List article links. The links
provide users with instant access to just those articles concerning
particular subjects.

•Database Selection from the Basic and Advanced Search Screens is
available using a drop-down list of the databases in the profile being
searched, eliminating the need to return to the Choose Databases
screen to select a different database.

•Database Groupings by Subject(Off) can be presented in the database
drop-down list, if opted by the library administrator, to offer users
groupings of databases sorted by popular subjects, such as technology,
business, medical science, psychology or education.

•Printing, Emailing and Saving in Standard Industry Formats allows
researchers interested in citing articles using specific industry
formats to choose from the following: AMA, APA, Chicago/Turabian:
Humanities, Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date, Modern Language Association or
Vancouver/ICMJE.

•RSS enabled Alerts allow librarians and users to feed results from
EBSCOhost Search and Journal Alerts into their news readers and
aggregators, as well as their web sites.

•The Option to Display, Save or Email EBSCOhost Records in MARC format
feature, if enabled in EBSCOadmin, gives EBSCOhost users the option to
manage delivery of search results using the MARC format.

•Context-specific Help is instantly available when users click on
question mark icons.

•A Personalization Activity Report will be available for library
administrators interested in statistics related to Personalized
Accounts, including total numbers of Search Alerts, Journal Alerts and
Personalized Accounts.

•The EBSCOhost Result List Default Sorting Option gives library
administrators the choice to set a relevancy default sort for All
Results on the Result List, in EBSCOadmin.

•The ability to control the Display of the Suggest Subject Terms
feature at the database level, in EBSCOadmin, gives library
administrators increased flexibility and control over the presentation of
databases that support this popular feature.

-- 
Joel Husenits
OPLIN Managing Editor

Ohio Public Library Information Network
2323 W. 5th Avenue, Suite 130
Columbus, Ohio 43204

Phone: (614) 528-5252
E-mail: husenjo at oplin.org