Novelist Select is now available in LION Classic and LION Cub!

Novelist Select is an integrated service, from EBSCOhost, that provides readers’ advisory content directly to the LION classic web catalog. It helps your users discover new books that meet their needs by providing additional content right in the catalog. Some of the content provided by Novelist Select includes:


* Suggestions for similar titles or other books in a series

* Suggestions for similar authors and author read-alikes

* Award winners

* Featured readers' advisory articles

* Recommended Reads

* Book Discussion Guides

* Curricular Connections articles

* ...and more!!!




Unfortunately, Novelist Select is only available in LION Classic and LION Cub right now, but it will be available in the next release of LION Encore before the end of the school year. Click the “Classic Catalog” link in Encore to see the enhanced content. Please feel free to check out this content and give us your feedback. We’d love to hear from you!


If you have any questions, drop us a line (ers_helpdesk@dpsk12.org).



Thanks, and we hope you and your students enjoy the new Novelist Select feature!

- Josh

From Encore:

From LION Cub:

Locked Scope Searching

Yesterday we introduced a new, highly requested, feature to Encore that locks your search results to your school's collection.






You no longer have to go back into your school's page in LION to perform subsequent searches of only your catalog- the search box at the top of the Encore results will automatically filter to books in your collection.



This functionality also works when searches for misspelled words are performed:

Encore 4.0

The LION search results platform was recently upgraded- here are some new features in the catalog:

• ISBN & call number searching is now available in Encore. Type either number directly into your search box- you don't need to "tell" Encore what type of search you are performing.
  

• Google Book previews are now available in the bibliographic details. Not all books will have a preview, so just check for the link below the jacket image.

• Integrated results from online databases are now also displayed when you perform a search. The "top results" from articles are displayed after the first 3 results from books, and there is also an "Articles" option in the Format facet. If you only want results from online databases, click the "Articles" link at the top of the screen. (Please note: NetTrekker & Britannica Elementary results are currently not working but will be added soon.)

Feel free to leave and questions or comments about the changes here, or you can email the helpdesk.

Enhanced Wildcard Searching

We showed you last year how to use asterisks to perform wildcard searches in Encore. However, that feature requires you to have at least 2 other characters in the search query- so you couldn't just search for * and see your entire collection displayed in the results.

To work around this issue, we've added the three character OCLC library code for Denver Public Schools ("DPU") to every bib record in the catalog. Now if you search for "DPU" from your school's scoped page, every book in your collection will display in the results- or if you search for "DPU" from the home page in LION, every book in the entire district will display in the results.

Here are some examples of uses for this new functionality:

• Let's say you have a new student that recently moved to Denver from Moscow. If you search for DPU and then refine the results using the "Language" facet to Russian, you will be able to see every book in DPS written in the student's native language.


• Perhaps you have a teacher at your school frantically looking for a DVD to show their class because they waited too long to order from the Video Film Library. If you search from your scoped page for DPU and then refine to "DVD" in the Format facet, you can quickly show them every DVD in your collection.


• Searching for DPU and then using the "Publish Date" facet could quickly help you find the oldest books in your collection that potentially need to be weeded.


• If you have a student looking for a good book to read, searching for DPU and refining your results to "Reviewed Book" in the format facet will display every book in your collection that has a published review written by a DPS librarian.

If you have any other suggestions for uses of this feature you would like to share, leave a message in the comments section or send an email to the helpdesk.

Community Tagging

A new feature of Encore 3.0 is “community tagging”, which essentially allows patrons to add subject headings not found in the MARC record. Subjects are then used as “tags” in the web catalog, allowing for many valuable applications in the teaching/learning environment.

How to add a tag:

- Perform a search


- Click on the title of the book you want to tag to see the bibliographic information. At the bottom you will see a link that says “Add a Tag”. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so after clicking that link. (only DPS staff are allowed to tag books)



- Add your tag and click “submit”. You can delete the tag you added by clicking the red "X" - but you cannot delete tags added by other users.



- After adding the tag, it may take 15 minutes or so for the catalog to be re-indexed and your tag to be visible to other users.


- If you notice an inappropriate tag in the catalog, please contact the helpdesk.

Export List to Email

- Click "Add to cart" for all of the items in your Encore search results that you would like to export to email




- To view the selected items, click the "My Cart" link in the top-right section of your browser window




- Enter an email address, subject, choose a format (brief or full text) and click “send”

Wildcard Searching is Here!

- Use an asterisk ( * ) to perform a wildcard search

- Examples: inter* will match "internal" and "internet"

- Must follow at least 2 characters