[Yulcat-l] Cataloger's Desktop Bookmarks

[Steven Arakawa]

More about the new version of Cataloger's Desktop, re bookmarking.

--Steven Arakawa

Message-ID:  <s40ea046.089 at loc.gov>
Date:         Wed, 8 Mar 2006 09:13:12 -0500
Reply-To: "Cataloger's Desktop Forum" <DESKTOP at loc.gov>
Sender: "Cataloger's Desktop Forum" <DESKTOP at loc.gov>
From: Bruce C Johnson <bjoh at loc.gov>
Subject: Old Cataloger's Desktop bookmarks
Comments: To: desktop at loc.gov
To: DESKTOP at sun8.LOC.GOV
Precedence: list

Status:

Q: Is it just me or did the enhancement blow away any existing bookmarks?

A: Thank you very much for your question. The old bookmarks were stored on 
individual's personal computers as cookies.  Although we had worked hard to 
make the personalization cookies persistent, cookie technology is 
inherantly limited and undependable, particularly when they are called upon 
to store large volumes of information.

    Over the past year and a half of operation, Cataloger's Desktop 
subscriber have reported continuing problems with personalizations, in 
particular bookmarks.    The only solution was to re-engineer how bookmarks 
are created and stored so that we were not limited by the cookie 
technology.  Our options were either to store the cookies on individuals' 
computers (which is extremely tricky and prone to problems) or to store 
them on the Cataloger's Desktop server.  We took the latter approach.

    The advantages of the new technology are many:

1.  You can now call your bookmarks whatever you like.
2.  Bookmarks and notes should be highly stable.
3.  You can see which paragraph your note is attached to.
4.  You can now create notes and call them whatever you like.
5.  There is no limit on the number of bookmarks or notes created.
6.  Bookmarks and notes are portable from one computer to another.
7.  Bookmarks and notes are sharable with everyone at a single institution.

    The disadvantages are as follows:

A.  Previously existing bookmarks do not carry over to the new technology.
B.  Bookmarks and notes are visible to everyone who shares the same 
logon.  (This may be a particular issue for institutions with many 
catalogers using the same logon.)

Best wishes,

Bruce

Bruce Chr. Johnson
President-Elect, Association for Library Collections & Technical Services 
(ALCTS)
a division of the American Library Association

and

Library of Congress
Cataloging Distribution Service
Washington, DC 20540-4911 USA

202-707-1652 (voice)  bjoh at loc.gov
202-707-3959 (fax)

----------------------------------------------------------
Steven Arakawa
Catalog Librarian for Training & Documentation
Catalog Dept. Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University.
P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240
(203)432-8286 steven.arakawa at yale.edu