SFX Documentation

ScienceDirect now sports bX recommendations

bX recommendations for scholarly articles, a.k.a. Get It Recommends, are now available in ScienceDirect for K-State users. Ex Libris announced this extension of bX services back in October; read the press release.

The recommendations appear in a box on the right side of the ScienceDirect display when the user is looking at an article's detailed view. The service is available whether or not K-State has access to the article's full text.

(click image to enlarge)

Based on the article being viewed, bX may or may not offer recommendations for other relevant articles. If no recommendations are available, the box will display the text, "The record has no recommendations." If recommendations are available, they will be listed in the box and will link to the referenced article(s). Initial testing indicates that the recommendations appearing in the box link to articles that were originally published by Elsevier.  This functionality is different from bX's Get It Recommends service in the Get It menu in that the recommendations produced by Get It Recommends are publisher-independent. For more about Get It Recommends, check out this K-State Today article.

bX recommendations inside ScienceDirect are available to all on-campus users of K-State's ScienceDirect access. Unfortunately, off-campus users do not see these recommendations right now. The service has a known issue with EZproxy that prevents it from displaying through a proxied connection. bX customers who use this service (including K-State Libraries) are lobbying Elsevier for a fix. This problem is internal to ScienceDirect and does not affect the Get It menu's display of Get It Recommends.

SFX's new embargo behavior

An e-journal embargo can be defined as the elapsed period of time between a journal article's publication and its availability through an online interface. The presence of an embargo affects whether or not an article is accessible to the end user requesting it, so SFX keeps track of embargo periods as part of its threshold information. Sometimes SFX faces a situation in which it cannot accurately calculate whether the full text of an embargoed article will be available to the end user. It is in these ambiguous situations that SFX's embargo behavior has changed.

bX is out of the box

Here at K-State Libraries, we rolled bX into production on July 6, 2009. It was a soft rollout, with minimal fanfare and only one public announcement. I expect we'll be doing a bit more promotion as the Fall semester swings into gear. Right now, though, the work has been focused on bX's look and behavior in the SFX Services Menu. We hit a few snags on the way to the current menu, but most of those problems have been solved. Here's a rundown of some of those snags and the decisions we're still facing.

Quick-change link text colors

So this morning I opened an SFX Services Menu to test something and found red link text swarming like fire ants all over the production menu. My reaction was predictable:
Horror.
Profanity.
"Where are my purple links??"
Fortunately, I had drunk enough coffee to survive such a dreadful shock. It didn't take long to figure out what was going on - the new bX style sheet was the culprit.

SFX menu with K-State Libraries branding

Tomorrow you'll see a slight change to the production version of the SFX services menu (Get It menu). At Dale's suggestion (and with a bit of his assistance) I've added the K-State Libraries logo to the menu footer. Why? Let's thank Karen Calhoun.

Declaring shenanigans on resized SFX menus

Let's begin with an ancient history lesson. When I took up the reins of SFX nearly (gasp) 2 years ago, I inherited menus that automatically opened in new windows sized at 500 x 680. While this isn't inherently evil behavior and does have a purpose, those of you who have done your usability homework (particularly here and here) know that it's considered bad form to force a browser window to behave in a way that overrides the user's own browser settings.  I knew this and yet lived with the resized menus because a) I didn't know enough about SFX to change them and b) I didn't have an opportune occasion to do so.

Implementing the simplified SFX menu has become that opportune occasion (and I know more now than I did 2 years ago). Today I declared shenanigans on those resizing menus and their resulting target windows. Tomorrow when SFX's test instance rolls to production, you'll see Get It menus and target windows resulting from those menus open at 800 x 600.

SFX Menu: Shrinking Pains

Last week I posted that I was rolling the simplified SFX menu into production. I did so expecting to eventually update you with the minor, easily repaired bugs found over the summer by our staff and users. Shows what I know. Instead, I'm back to report the weirdness we've already found and to plea for advice from fellow Simplified Menu crusaders who may have already solved similar problems.

This post's alternate title is "What to Expect when You're Expecting a Simplified SFX Menu."

SFX Menu, stripped down

Some of you know that I've been messing around with a redesign of our SFX menu, à la David Walker's presentation, "Improving the SFX menu". If you didn't know that I've been working on the menu, I highly recommend you watch David's presentation before reading further. It'll be 20 or so well-spent minutes of your work life. Be aware that it takes a little time to get started.

Because we had already customized many of the files that create the SFX menu, this project turned into my albatross - always waiting for me; difficult; boring; inspiring crankiness. That statement isn't any kind of criticism of David's great analysis of the menu or his generosity in offering ready-modified templates. Rather, it's a small explanation as to why it's taken me so freakin' long to make this menu redesign happen.

Fortunately for the project, Ex Libris came to the rescue with the March 2008 software update and a simplified SFX menu template. The template can be configured entirely from SFX Admin. Over the past few months I've been testing the results with LIT. To LIT and to me, this menu seems ready for you so tonight it will roll over to production. Tomorrow you'll see a new look for the faithful Get It menu. Since summer is best for beta testing, this new look is subject to change as you ferret out its problems. Read on for details.

Relating to SFX

Effective with the December 2007 software update, SFX has implemented a way to link between "related" journal titles. SFX's definition of a "related" title is broad, and includes most variations on the serials librarian's favorite theme, "Title Change".

I've already blogged a user-friendly description of this service. This post describes some of the esoteric data logic things the service does, for good and ill. Examples are included; follow along in a separate tab or window.

SFX's summer tan

Because everyone looks a little younger and fresher at the end of the summer, right? So does SFX.
This week we leaned hard on two of the big changes we've been working on for a while. Many details are below....