Author Topic: national library updates  (Read 210 times)

Offline maddys52

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national library updates
« on: Monday 06 November 23 04:31 GMT (UK) »
Advance notice for NLA users - trove and other on-line services will be unavailable on 9-10 December 2023.
https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/news/2023/online-services-unavailable-9-10-december-2023#

They are also changing the log in method.
https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/news/2023/were-updating-how-you-login-catalogue-eresources

 :)

Online sparrett

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Re: national library updates
« Reply #1 on: Monday 06 November 23 05:54 GMT (UK) »
The changed login process sounds like aa positive step. Quicker and safer.
Thanks for the update,
Sue
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Offline seeking0

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Re: national library updates
« Reply #2 on: Thursday 09 November 23 01:36 GMT (UK) »
Thanks. It's probably too much to hope they intend to fix some of the more annoying things they stuffed up in the "upgrade" a few years ago.
One of them being the excessive white space in the new layout for of the search page, which means that on my laptop I have to scroll far too often. Another being that when a search finds no matches it drops some of the search criteria. The blasted thing has NO IDEA which search criteria are most important to me and I frequently have to re-enter them.
Then there's that unbelievably patronising message and utterly irrelevant photo it shows when there are no search results. Admittedly no material harm, only to my patience. Also the colour scheme that actually includes PURPLE text for goodness sake.
Most annoying of all is that although they consulted left, right, and centre with every man company or government department his dog that wanted to get in on a success story but they didn't give the actual users an opportunity for input.  They didn't improve the search capabilities. Which already were fantastic of course but even something that fabulous can be improved upon (and not by just changing the way it looks!) For example - I'd love to be able to do a case sensitive search. Thinking of surnames such as Beer and Shell where it returns too many results.
I'll bet that upgrade cost tens of millions of dollars. A case sensitive search could possibly cost about a thousand, depending on what technology they are using.
Trove is fabulous of course and I am deeply grateful for it but the current management leaves a lot to be desired IMHO.