Features
From ReservesDirect: Open Source EReserves System
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2.1 Scalability |
Features Summary
ReservesDirect . . .
- Is free, open-source software built to run on open standards like PHP, MySQL, and Apache;
- Enables both instructors and library staff to manage reserve lists;
- Allows users to upload files, link to online materials, and fax documents directly into the system as PDFs;
- Integrates with the library's catalog, providing convenient access to all course materials, physical and electronic, in one place;
- Allows instructors to reactivate reserve lists for classes they've taught before;
- Can be deployed in single-library or multi-library environments;
- Is "skinnable" for customized look and feel;
- Can be implemented as a completely self-service system where instructors manage all of their own reserves materials, or as a full-service system where library staff manage everything for the instructors, or as a combination of the two; and
- Includes other features such as team-teaching support, course cross-listings, item sorting, item annotation, and the ability to export reserve lists to courseware, such as Blackboard.
Global Features
Scalability
ReservesDirect can be implemented in a number of different ways to suit the local environment and workflow of a library, with the ability to grow as your library grows and your service level expands.
The program can handle any number of reserve desk operations, from a single library with one reserve desk to a large multi-library system with numerous independent reserve operations. The system was originally designed by librarians, reserves staff, and system developers at Emory University, where ReservesDirect simultaneously serves eight different libraries, all with different levels of service to faculty and students.
As an example of its flexibility, ReservesDirect can be implemented as a completely self-serve environment where instructors handle their own reserves with no library staff intervention except for system and server maintenance. Likewise, it can be put in place with all self-service options turned off so that library staff can maintain control over what types of materials are placed on reserve and monitor for copyright compliance. The most frequent implementation will probably be a hybrid environment, where instructors are allowed to manage their own reserves, but staff provide a level of service placing items on reserve as well. At Emory University, all of these levels of service co-exist on the same system. Some libraries turn off the self-service for instructors altogether (utilizing the "not trained" feature), while others provide a combination of self-service and full-service from staff. Still others turn off self-service for particular instructors until they have been trained in how to use the system.
ILS integration
ReservesDirect is designed to integrate with a library's Integrated Library System for processing and display of physical items. Staff can place items on reserve in the ILS simply by scanning the barcode into ReservesDirect and selecting a loan period. In multi-library installations, ReservesDirect can process physical items differently based on a given library's local requirements. Physical items display in a course reserves list along with electronic items and provide a link to the ILS for full item record display.
If a library wishes to implement only electronic reserves and keep physical items seperate, the physical item integration can be turned off. Currently ReservesDirect is designed to integrate with Sirsi Unicorn. Localization for other ILS vendors, such as Endeavor and III, requires modification of certain scripts to accomodate the different ways these systems store and communicate bibliographic and item-level information.
Courseware (Blackboard) integration
ReservesDirect is also designed to integrate with courseware through an "export" feature that utilizes RSS feeds. This feature allows instructors to paste a simple line of code (generated by the system) into their courseware class, creating a dynamic link between the courseware and ReservesDirect. When a change is made to a reserves list in ReservesDirect, the change automatically and instantly appears in the instructors courseware class. Currently this feature has been implemented with Blackboard, although it is designed to be flexible enough to work with other courseware packages, such as WebCT and Vista. ReservesDirect can also export reserves lists to personal web pages and provides wizards to walk instructors through the process of exporting their reserves.
The courseware "export" feature can be turned off fairly easily, if desired.
Copyright management
ReservesDirect provides features to help staff implement the copyright policies their library has established for their reserves operation. For version 2.1, these include user name and password authentication into the system utilizing either Kerberos (meaning students can use their campus network accounts to log into ReservesDirect) or individual passwords for users. ReservesDirect automatically creates an account for a user as soon as he or she logs in, so generally there is no need to establish accounts for students. The system also allows staff to create users before they have a chance to log in for the first time, if desired. This can be useful especially when new instructors join a college or university and staff want to give them immediate self-service access to the system.
ReservesDirect also allows staff to place notes on individual items to indicate the status of any copyright inquiries or to indicate limitations on use. ReservesDirect does not currently integrate with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) for requesting copyright permissions, though such a piece could be developed locally by a school that had a need for it.
For version 2.2, ReservesDirect will offer course-level access restriction through an "enrollment" feature that allows either staff or instructors to give a class one of three statuses:
- "Public" enrollment indicates that the class is open to any student capable of logging into the system. Any student can add it to their list of classes and view the readings.
- "Private" enrollment indicates that only certain students can access the class and view readings. Instructors or staff will be able to indicate who has access to the class ahead of time according to the class enrollment lists, or set up a "moderated" environment where students request to be added to the class and the instructor (or staff) approve or reject the request.
- "Closed" enrollment indicatess that no new users can be added to the class. The class will only be visible to the instructor of the class and those students who have been admitted to it. No other students will be able to view the class or request to be added to it.
Skins
ReservesDirect is fully skinnable, including the look and feel of the header and footer areas as well as the shape, size, and color of the navigational tabs and the color of all text and tables. Skins are easily created using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). In multi-library installations, each library can have its own skin.
Features by Role
Features for Students
- Ability to look up classes by instructor or class
- "My Courses" tab remembers a student's classes and displays them when the student logs in, eliminating repeated class lookups and saving time--students only need to "find" their class once
- Display of electronic and physical items on reserve for a class
- Hide documents that have already been viewed to reduce clutter in long reserves lists
- Links to "helper applications" such as Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, QuickTime, and others provided within each class
- Edit profile, including name and email address
- Icons indicate what individual items are, such as PDF, text document, audio, video, etc.
Features for Instructors
- Create and edit classes, with full control over class number, section number, and name
- Classes an instructor is teaching automatically appear in their "MyReserves" list for easy location
- Easy creation of class crosslistings
- Ability to upload any type of computer file, including PDF, Microsoft Office files, text documents, web pages, images, sound files, video files, data sets, and much more
- Multiple ways to add items to a class, including:
- upload documents
- add URLs
- search the ReservesDirect document archive for previously used items. All items loaded into ReservesDirect are available for instructors to search and add to their classes. (Instructors can mark their own items as "personal" when they create them to prevent other instructors from finding them in a search)
- fax items for automatic conversion to PDF (optional)
- Sort items--by title, author, or custom order
- Annotate items with notes that appear to students
- Add headings to reserves lists to group readings by syllabus date or category. Headings function like folders, which you can add materials to.
- Activate or deactivate items by date. Instructors can choose what items display to students and can "hide" items until a given date
- Team teaching capability, allowing multiple instructors to add, edit, sort, annotate and delete. Instructors may add other instructors to their classes, or staff may do it for them.
- Proxy access for instructor assistants. Proxies are generally students that are assisting an instructor in teaching a class or helping to manage their materials. Proxies have access only to the class that the instructor (or staff) assigns them to. Proxies may add, edit, or delete items, and generally manage the class they are assigned to.
- Class reactivation. All classes taught by an instructor are archived at the end of a semester. With a few clicks, an instructor can reactivate any course they have taught in the past, including all readings, co-instructors, and crosslistings. Items can be selectively reactivated so that an instructor can exclude items used in a previous class that he or she no longer wishes to use
- Easily copy documents from one class to another
- Export reserves lists to courseware, such as Blackboard. Link is dynamic, so changes in ReservesDirect appear automatically in the courseware class.
- Dynamic, contextual help system that provides a fully-searchable, user-taggable set of help articles that provide help contextual to the page a user is currently looking at.
Features for Library Staff
- Execute all instructor functions for any class in the system. Create, reactivate, and edit any class.
- Merge duplicate classes.
- Add, edit, and manage users, including the ability to specify access permissions for specfic users by changing their role (e.g., student, proxy, instructor).
- Establish temporary passwords for users who are having difficulty logging into the system using standard authentication methods (e.g., Kerberos or LDAP).
- Process physical items through the ReservesDirect interface. ILS integration allows staff to import bibliographic information to ReservesDirect and create reserve records in the ILS with a simple scan of a barcode and click of a mouse.
- Annotate items with notes that are only visible to staff
- Top-level advanced search functionality to look up items by author, title, item type, or any metadata field.
- Easily edit or delete any item in the system.
- Request queue for physical items to allow easy managment and processing of physical items that instructors request to be reactivated from previous semesters. Includes email notification when new requests come into the request queue.
Features for Admins
- Full System Control, Admins have access to every feature provide to other users
Additional features located on the Admin Tab
- Add/Edit Department
- Add/Edit Libraries
- Manuscript Processing Library / Multimedia Processing Library -- Course are associated to libraries thru the department of the primary course. Additionally it is possible to direct physical item request to secondary libraries by setting the Monograph Processing Library and Manuscript Processing Library, items are then redirected based on the item_group specified. Libraries must be added to the system before they can be selected as processing libraries, therefore it may be necessary to add all your libraries then edit and set processing libraries.
- Add/Edit Terms -- The terms table defines the start and end date for each academic term. These dates are used as default values for the activation/expiration dates for new courses and reserve items.
- Add/Edit System Notices -- Messages are displayed below the breadcrumbs and above the page content on every page. Messages can be displayed for adefined time window and can be limited to a specific user role. Valid HTML will also be displayed in the message area. Messages are displayed on every page while active.
- Manage Course Feed for a Class - This screen allows editing of the registar_key field
- Flag Course for Copyright Review - This will clear the copyright flag for a selected course
- Help - Contextual help is administered from this screen
Features by Version
Version 2.1
Version 2.1 was first launched November 22, 2004. 2.1 is the base version for ReservesDirect 2 (see the history of ReservesDirect). First implementation was at Emory University and went live on November 22, 2004.
Course
- Add / Edit Course
- Lookup Course
Class
- Add / Edit Class
- Activate (Renew) Class
- [Deactivate Class]
- Lookup Class (by Instructor / Semester / Class)
- Aliased class cross-listings (retains class cross-listings when a given class name is edited)
- Selective proxy access (Instructors may restrict proxy access to particular courses, as well as create and delete their own proxies)
- Optimized team teaching (Multiple Instructors may fax, upload, edit class)
- “Preview” feature in faculty / staff interface (allows view of what course will look like to students)
- Improved setup for semester selection of courses (making it easier to set up a course for the correct semester—now given a fixed choice of semester rather than having to type them in)
- Export class—RSS feed of class to Blackboard/LearnLink, backwards compatible with existing 1.x RSS feeds
- Sortable list of reserve items—instructor/proxy/staff
- Selective item activation for a class being reactivated (for both Instructors and Staff, allows reactivation of a course along with some, all, or none of the associated items)
User
- Add / Edit / Delete User (Student / Instructor / Staff / Proxy / Special User)
- Authenticate user against LDAP servers (create profile in local database if first login)
- Edit my profile
- Lookup User (Student / Instructor / Staff / Proxy / Special User)
Item / Copies
- Add / Edit (Annotate) / Delete Item
- Upload Item (Browse)
- Link Item (URL)
- Add eReserve from Archive (search)
- Request previously used physical item from Archive. Includes ability to “Request” item and have that request delivered to reserves staff processing queue
- Fax Item
- Delete item from specific reserve list
- Add Physical Item (Book, CD, DVD, etc.), library (ILS, cataloged) or personal copies
- Set reserve items for specific class to Active/Inactive or Hide until activation date
- Ability to add multiple documents from a search results list to a class
- Icons in all display lists of items to indicate type of document (PDF, Word, Text, URL, audio, video, etc.)
- For students, links to helper applications needed to view items in a reserves list
Notification
- Email notification when system errors occur (errorEmail)
- adminEmail (Reserves Direct email not yet used—potentially for emailing system admins with problems)
Notes
- Ability to attach notes to any item, class, user, etc. If another instructor reactivates item from database, notes created by original instructor should do not carry over with item, unless permanent content notes relevant to material
- Item-level permanent (“Content”) and temporary (“Instructor Comment”) fields
System-wide
- Ability to “skin” interface colors and header/footer to blend with localized branding
- Help files including browseable “chapters” for each tab of interface and index. Also include *Quicktime tutorials on basic reserves functions for instructors.
- Login authentication error message for failed logins
Version 2.2.0
Version 2.2.0 was first launched at Emory University August 22, 2005. This version was the first stable code release of ReservesDirect to the open source community on September 1st, 2005.
- Top-level search engine allows staff to search for and edit items without first being in a specific class
- For staff, copy or merge reserves lists, instructors, proxies, and/or crosslistings of existing classes, or copy one class to a new class.
- From within a class, ability for instructors or staff to copy items from one class to another
- For students, ability to hide readings already viewed to reduce clutter of long reserves lists
- Enhanced reserves list organization to allow instructors and staff to create "headings" that divide list of materials into categories
- For instructors and staff, added ability to select what icon appears next to documents to indicate what type they are (system autmatically selects doc type if none is selected by user)
- Ability for instructors/staff to review and edit items immediately after adding them
- Added ability for instructors to select desired loan periods for physical items when reactivating past classes
- Enhanced "Request Queue" for physical items that allows sorting requests by date, request ID, instructor, or class. Also added print functionality that can print each request on a separate page (or not, according to style sheet settings) and displays current holdings (location/status) information for each physical item
- "Duplicate item" feature allows easy creation of multiple items that share the same or similar metadata (for example, multiple chapters from the same book)
- Enhanced instructor lookup mechanism, allowing easier searches by instructor name
- Enhanced controls to prevent creation of duplicate classes
- Check physical and electronic items being added to a class to prevent duplicate records from being created
- Enhanced sort screen metadata
- Improved item numbering of reserves lists when viewing a class
- Improved page load times for lists of class materials
- Enhanced workflow of staff interface for adding items to classes
- Enhancements to persistency of skinned interfaces
- Added notifications to user when account is created and when an override password is created or modified
Version 2.2.1
Version 2.2.1 was first released in production at Emory University in January 2006.
- View usage statistics–new robust “Statistics” tab for tracking system and class-level usage
- ”Auto” sorting when uploading/linking new item–new items uploaded into a class automatically fall into place when a class is sorted by title or author
- New Edit Item screen for physical copies–allows editing of physical copy information, such as call number, barcode, and reserve desk
- LDAP support for user authentication
- Protection from direct linking to reserves files–when users link directly to a URL in ReservesDirect, they are challenged for a username and password before allowing them to open the document. All links to documents are now routed through the ReservesViewer, so besides the additional security, usage statistics are also captured when students view documents from a CMS (such as Blackboard) or an instructor's web site.
- Class lookup screens enhanced through the use of AJAX technology, making looking up classes faster and more streamlined. Lookups for the staff interface can now be done by instructor, department, or class name.
- Exposed activate/deactivate dates for classes on the reactivate screen–when reactivating a class, staff can change the active dates directly on the reactivation screen. Also, staff or instructors can reactivate a class with a different name without affecting previous instances of the class, if they wish to.
- Export class items and output of statistics reports–allows exporting of class data or statistics reports in CSV format for use by Excel or other spreadsheet programs
- Staff can add instructors and proxies from Manage Users–"quick links" have been added to the Manage Classes tab for staff to add instructors and proxies to existing classes
- ”Audit” function for override password creation–this is a “back-end” feature to track who creates override passwords and when they are created, in order to comply with FERPA regulations about the privacy of student information
- Calendar widgets–for anywhere that a date must be set, calender widgets have been added to assist in selecting dates.
- Abilitiy to assign staff to a given library through interface–exposes the ability to assign staff-level uses to a specific library from the Edit User tab (previously only doable through the back end by an administrator).
- Add / Edit / Delete Library through interface–an admin level feature to edit libraries, previously only available through the back end
- Add / Edit / Delete Department through interface–an admin level feature to edit departments, previously only available through the back end
- ”Not trained” table accessible through staff interface–exposes the “not trained” status on the edit user screen to allow staff to remove an instructor’s ability to edit their own classes
- Updated duplicateReserve checker–rewrote the function that catches duplicate classes being reactivated or created for the same semester as a class that already exists
- Enhanced heading functionality-changed headings within a class reserves list to folders so that folders can be resorted and have their associated items travel with them.
- Enhanced positional CSS display framework allows even greater flexibility for customization of look and feel.
...in addition to a number of miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements to improve performance and security.
Version 2.2.2
This version was released in late April 2006.
- Support for external registrar feeds for automatic course setup and automatic student enrollment in classes (this feature can be enabled and disabled).
- New enrollment management feature allows a given course to have one of three statuses: OPEN (any student can join the class); MODERATED (students can request to be added to the class, and instructors or staff approve the requests); or CLOSED (enrollment is restricted to the students already in the class and those coming through automatic updates, if they are enabled).
- Ability to edit multiple items from the Edit Class screen for such fields as Notes, Activation date, and Deactivation date.
- Security enhancements to improve protection of files stored in ReservesDirect from unauthorized users.
- Dynamic, contextual help system. The new help system allows dynamic creation of articles that have permission levels for both viewing and editing by role (student, proxy, instructor, etc.). All help articles are fully searchable and taggable (social tagging-style). Main help articles are contextual to the page the user is looking at. The system comes pre-loaded with a set of help articles, but more, of course, can be added (and existing articles edited or deleted).
Version 2.3
Version 2.3 was released on October 15, 2007.
- AutoProxy with EZproxy allows licensed content such as eBooks and journal articles indexed in proprietary databases to be automatically accessible to off-campus users.
- Copyright management features include an "Approve copyrights" button in the Edit Class screen so that staff/admin can know whether all materials in a reserve list have been checked for copyright compliance.
- Crosslist System Generated Courses - the system can now accept crosslistings from registrar data.
- Turn off Debug with nodebug allows a developer to exit debugging mode by typing "?nodebug" in the location bar after the URL.
- Barcode for all items - all item types, including electronic, now contain a barcode field.
- Prevent Duplicate Physical Requests - the system now lists each physical item only once in the staff processing queue, even when multiple instructors have requested the item or when one instructor has requested the item multiple times. When a staff member processes the physical item, the system will allow her/him to add the item to multiple classes.
- An Auto Installer makes installation of the system easier and faster.
- ISBN/ISSN/OCLC fields for physical items help staff track materials.
- Dynamic Contextual Help - when a user clicks "help," an appropriate help screen appears on the right-hand side of the screen.
- Administration screens
- Add/Edit News allows administrators to display notices of downtime, new features, and other announcements to users from the Admin tab.
- Add/Edit Terms (Semesters) allows administrators to add and edit semesters from the Admin tab.
- Flag Course for Copyright Review allows administrators to reset the copyright flag from the Admin tab to indicate that staff review of copyrights is again needed for a class whose copyrights were previously approved.
Version 2.4
Version 2.4 was released August 13, 2008.
- Item-level copyright management. In the "edit item" screen, a library staff member can now choose to "Deny access for this class only" or to "Deny use for all classes."
- One queue for all requests. The "Process Requests" queue in ReservesDirect will now accept requests from faculty for library digitization services (text scanning, audio/video digitization) and for new and reactivated physical items (books, CDs, DVDs). This means that library staff have a single queue to check for reserves processing.
- Request forms. We have now packaged HTML request forms with ReservesDirect that can be inserted into a library's online catalog. Faculty can request physical items and/or digitization services directly from the catalog using these forms.
- Abstract ILS class. It will now be easier to implement ReservesDirect 2.4 with any Integrated Library System.
Version 3.0
A pre-alpha preview of ReservesDirect version 3.0 was released on February 29, 2008.
- Built using Zend Framework (http://framework.zend.com/)
- Unit tests with SimpleTest (http://simpletest.sourceforge.net/)
- Drag-and-drop sortable reserve lists
- Granular user permissions
- Extensible ILS integration
