[WEB4LIB] Searching E-Resources

[Abbott, Bruce]

My personal favorite is Boxmind:  http://www.boxmind.com.
However, whenever I've recommended it as a model, I've found people say it
is not intuitive for them to use.

Bruce Abbott
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Library
433 Bolivar St.
New Orleans, LA  70112

504-568-7718 (fax)
504-568-6103 (voice)
babbot at lsuhsc.edu 



-----Original Message-----
From: Melissa Just [mailto:just at hsc.usc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 12:48 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Searching E-Resources




Our library is in the process of re-thinking how we present our extensive
list of e-resources.  We are transitioning from static to dynamic pages
and will be using ColdFusion.

What we would like to do is provide "guided" searching in the form of
three boxes/columns/levels of searching.

For example (and this is generalized, the details haven't been worked out
yet):

Column 1: A pull-down menu of options that separate resources by main
category (for us this might be Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Allied Health)

Column 2: A check box list of option by format including e-journals,
e-books, web sites, etc.

Columm 3: An option to enter a keyword to limit the search

So, a nursing student could choose to an option in column 1 only to view
all nursing resources, or limit the search in column 2 to look at a list
of all nursing e-journals, or really limit the search by adding her own
keyword "pediatrics" in column 3 and get nursing e-journals on pediatrics.

Does anyone know of sites (library or non-library) that are already doing
this to some degree?  We are interested in seeing what's already out there
so that we don't have to completely re-invent the wheel.  Or, are there
sites that you know of that use interesting methods for database-driven
e-resource searching?

Thanks for any examples you can provide!
-Melissa


Melissa L. Just, MLIS
Information Specialist
Norris Medical Library
University of Southern California
just at usc.edu