[OPLINTECH] OPLIN about:books

[Stephen Hedges]

The latest version of about:books (http://oplin.org/aboutbooks) is now
ready for your testing.

We have made quite a few changes in response to your earlier feedback,
the layout of the page being the most noticeable. We've also been
adding a lot of sites to our high-priority search list, based on all
the great suggestions that have been posted to OPLINLIST over the last
few days, and we'll continue to do that.

Some people were concerned about users being able to find the site, so
we've posted some instructions (http://www.oplin.org/faq/10#10n323) on
how to add the about:books search box to your own page.

One thing that concerns OPLIN staff is the possibility that users
might get "lost" and not find their way back to the site.
Specifically, if you follow one of the links from the upper half of
the about:books search results page (the ones with the images of the
book covers), you end up in Google Book Search, which has a search box
very similar to the about:books search box. Do you think users will be
confused by this and start searching deeper in Google when they really
mean to do another about:books search?

Finally, some librarians expressed the wish that their catalog
holdings could be displayed in about:books. If you're a WorldCat
library, this is already done; the Google Book Search will display
holdings from the closest WorldCat libraries when you click on "Find
this book in a library."

[ BTW, if you didn't see yesterday's big news about Google Book
Search, you can read about it at
http://oplin.org/ohiolibrarynews/?p=263 ]

Please let us know what you think.

Stephen