Category Archives: How do you use the library

More Consistent Linking from Library Databases

In order to provide a consistently satisfactory user experience, in which users of the Library’s research databases (and the Summon discovery service) don’t face dead-end blank screens when trying to reach articles and books, the Library will deactivate Index-enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL) in our link resolver (360Link).

What does this mean exactly?
Index-enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL) is available for certain article databases that cooperate with the company which provides 360Link.  IEDL takes the user from a results list to an article or book without any kind of intermediate screen. From certain databases (and from Summon), IEDL was supposed to streamline the user experience by eliminating clicks between the search results and the items themselves. This has not turned out to be the case.

What will I see?
When you click on a link for full-text, you will now see the familiar intermediate screen for all articles and books.  This “Get it @ Midd” screen is 360Link, our link resolver.  You will then click a button to access the item, as you always have in cases where you saw this screen. The intermediate screen will be similar to the following example:

Get It @ Midd page

Why did we make the change?
For several reasons having to do with commercial relationships among various database vendors, IEDL used to function better than it currently does. Now, the inconvenience of the dead-end screens occurs much more often. The dead ends (blank screens) provide little or no useful information as to how the user can access materials the Library actually has. Always displaying the intermediate “Get it @ Midd” screen will allow users to see our accurate holdings and to obtain access consistently.

Questions and/or Feedback
Please feel free to comment below or send questions to the Midd librarians at http://go.middlebury.edu/askus .

How Do You Use Your Library?- Oz Aloni

This is the first in a series* of posts about members of the Middlebury community who value the library. Today’s profile is of Oz Aloni.

Delal Bridge in Kurdistan

Where are you from and what’s your academic specialty?

I’m from Jerusalem, Israel. I teach at the Modern Hebrew program at Middlebury. I’m a Semitic Linguist, which means I research languages of the Semitic family, a family that includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Amharic, and many more. My research is focused on a language called the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) – in fact only on one dialect of that language: the Jewish dialect of Zakho, Kurdistan.

Two books authored/edited by Oz Aloni in the Faculty Authors Collection in the Davis Family Library: The Neo-Aramaic Speaking Jewish Community of Zakho, and Lishana deni : leḳeṭ agadot ṿe-sipure ʻam mi-masoret Yehude Kurdisṭan mesuparim be-Aramit be-lahag Yehude Zakhu

What do you like about Middlebury?

The beautiful nature surrounding us; the college’s great facilities; the friendliness of Vermonters.

How do you use the library?

For my own research I use the library mainly through its online databases and resources, and also its efficient interlibrary loan service. Two of the databases that were recently added to the library’s collection are particularly valuable for me: the Responsa Project and the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics [see note below]. They are also very useful for my students, as research tools for the assignments I give.

How can the library better serve you?

The library is doing a pretty good job as it is. One thing that can be an improvement is expanding the Hebrew collection, and I’m happy to help with that.

Note that the library has free access for one more week to the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics while we decide whether to subscribe. Check it out!

*How Do You Use The Library? is a social media series based on the “Humans of New York” model.