Give Us Your Feedback on QCAT
Posted: August 13th, 2007Queen’s University Library is planning to make significant changes to our library catalogue QCAT in 2008. We want to make it easier for you to search the library’s collection to find the information you need. As such, we’re very keen to hear your feedback on QCAT.
Here are some open questions for all library users:
- Concerning QCAT – what would you like to change? What would you like to keep the same?
- What kinds of searches are easy to do with QCAT? What kinds of searches are difficult?
- What do you wish QCAT could do that it doesn’t do already?
Did you think of a response to any of these questions? Feel free to fill out the “Leave a Reply” form to share your comments below. If you’d like your comments to remain private, send an email directly to librarian Wendy Huot (wendy.huot@queensu.ca).
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August 14th, 2007 at 8:28 am
QCAT desperately needs a facelift. It is not user friendly: you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to save both your searches and your query results. Each individual result in the query is not clearly delineated from the ones directly above and below, so often you’re not sure if you’ve got the call number from the one you want or the one above.
And why do I have to use the bar code on my Queen’s card to access things like my bookbag, because when I am logged onto MyQueen’s, I can see my library account info, etc. Get rid of the requirement to use your barcode when all other services, such as QCARD, allow access with your UserID and password. This should be sufficient for accessing library services that now require your barcode. It’s a pain to enter, and no one can remember all those numbers!
We need more options when saving or printing search queries, and these should all be readily accessible. You also need to provide greater control for us to cull out unwanted hits in our query and then save the rest.
Most importantly, I think, is the need to create a direct link to Refworks from a QCAT search query, to make it easier to add search results from QCAT to your Refworks account.
Separate collections in the search: don’t lump audio/visual materials in with books and journals — they should appear, but separately.
plink, plink
(my two cents)
November 13th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Allow QCat to recognize call numbers without spaces. I know that they are important, however, many times students do not write the call numbers down with the correct spaces, and it makes it difficult to identify the book, if they can’t remember the title.
Also, why do we have to write our barcode out once to log-in and then again when filling out a request form. What’s the point in logging in, if you just have to type that long annoying number out again?
I really like the subject heading in QCat, they are very helpful.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I agree to all of the statements above, as well, QCAT should also be more “Web 2.0″ friendly – more interactive. Make searching a book in the library similar to searching a book on Amazon.com – allow users to write reviews, recommend books and rank them. Even better, have a system that shows “Patrons who have took this book out also took”… it makes the research experience more interesting.