news>>library launches re-designed Web site

New Features Accompany New Look

The Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library at the Institute of Transportation Studies has a new home—on the Web, that is.

Along with its new url (http://library.its.berkeley.edu/), the new ITS Library Web site has a new look, a new structure, and new functionality, including a live chat feature to ask questions of a reference librarian, a syndication feed that allows patrons to sign up for transportation news, and a Facebook page, enabling other Facebook members to become a Library "friend," in order to keep up with additions to the collection, events at the library, changes in hours and other news.

"We changed the emphasis from a description of the library, to more of a Web version of the Library," explained Kendra Levine, the newly named Reference Librarian who led the makeover.

The ITS Library Home page has direct links to four top online portals for transportation research materials: Melvyl (the UC online catalog), TRIS (the world's largest bibliographic database, which is produced by the Transportation Research Board), Web of Science, and Google Transportation Metasearch.

The site also features selective lists developed by ITS librarians to point patrons to the most pertinent and useful article databases, e-journals, and transportation catalogs. ITS librarians have also organized an online list of resources grouped around subject areas.

"We can provide context for these resources," Levine said. "People don't want to sift through 100 aviation resources. We can point them to the top five."

Decisions to include these features are all guided by what patrons have asked for in the past and will change according to demands in the future.

"The focus is what the students here are asking for and what public institutions are asking for," Levine said.

"Our collection development is similarly focused," noted Library Director Rita Evans, with new purchases targeted at areas where the Library receives inquiries from researchers and students.

"Students" means students at all four campuses: ITS Davis, Irvine and Los Angeles, in addition to ITS Berkeley. Links to all four are also on the Library home page.

In addition to transportation students across the UC system, the Library offers its services to personnel at California public agencies.

New elements include:

• "Ask A Librarian," offering real-time, private online exchanges with a reference librarian;
• a Facebook page for the Harmer E. Davis Library, allowing Facebook members to sign up for alerts about items such as new additions to the collection, changes in hours, special events and the like; and
• an RSS feed for transportation news.

Levine and Evans pointed out that the structure of the new site echoes the Engineering Library's architecture and reflects current thinking on how to translate physical collections to the Web. "We are always looking for another way to engage people," Levine said.