What's New

26 May 1998

• Feedback
• Have you received a letter from us?
• Keyword search function
• Comments now available
• Postcode dilemma
• Z39.50

Feedback

Some feedback we've received about the site: "Bloody brilliant. What more can I say! This is fantastic. Congratulations"; "Love your new library listing!"; "Thought the map function was great" …. Keep it coming!

Thanks to those people who have sent in changes - either advising us of updated or outdated information, such as email discussion lists or telling us where directories of their special group of libraries can be found. We are now working on updating the site based on this feedback.

Have You Received a Letter From Us?

We have just sent out another batch of letters to over 600 libraries, so by now if you have an entry in the Gateway you should have received information. The information includes background on the Gateway, a print out of the information contained about your library, a password, details for updating the information, and draft guidelines for designing web pages for your library. If you haven't received this information and would like a password to enable you to update your entry, then please email us.

Keyword Search Function

Yes, the Australian Libraries Gateway now has a full keyword search facility for the Organisation name, Library name, Alternate names and NUC symbol fields. This will definitely make searching for the entry you want easier. So, for example, instead of having to enter 'University of Sydney', 'Sydney University' will find the library.

Comments Now Available

The comments field in your library's entry is now available for your use. We hope that in this area you will add information about your library that doesn't fit in any of the other fields, for example, that you provide Internet access, that you have genealogical resources available, perhaps your hours of opening. Once again this is an opportunity to personalise your entry. Because we have heard from a number of joint use libraries, we are looking at how we can best show this information on the database. In the meantime joint use libraries may want to indicate this in the comments area, even though it is not searchable.

Postcode Dilemma

Please don't despair if you've used the map function on the Gateway and haven't been able to find the libraries you wanted. A number of postcodes were not included in the package we use to support this function. We are currently adding these postcodes and by the end of this week you should have no trouble finding any library in the database by using the map function.

Z39.50

Have you added information to this part of the database? We are mailing information about the Z39.50 directory to a range of institutions this week (state, university and research libraries), to increase their awareness this section of the site. If you have an Z39.50-enabled catalogue or database that you would like to make accessible to external Z39.50 clients, you can register your service online through this directory, describe connection parameters and document supported search attributes.

What was news ... in 1998

Last modified: October 01 2004.