Here is a copy of an email I just sent to Rich Mendola and John Ellinger about problems with Euclid and Discover-E.

Dear Rich and John,

Greetings--I wanted to thank you both for the time you spent on the phone with me last week regarding problems using Euclid and Discover-E. I was grateful for your interest in the problems. I thought I would pass along a representative assignment so that you can see how intensively my students use the library in the opening days of the semester. The infamous “Library Scavenger Hunt” is at the end of the syllabus. I develop a new SH for each course every time I teach it. I am in the process of developing one for a course this fall with a new list of items, which is where things fell apart in my searches to develop the SH and to put together my reserve list and update my syllabus.

I tried, for instance, to search in Euclid for the French Revolution to jump start my reserve list and syllabus (my area of specialty and the topic of my courses for next fall) and wanted a list of recent books (as one used to get with such a search in the Sirsi-Euclid) that had that in the title or in the subject heading. So I used keyword French Revolution. I do not know if you will be able to get the same result from this weblink, but here is the mess I got (it pulled up a lot on Algeria and Egypt, and British Romantic poetry, but almost nothing on the Fr Rev itself….) --
http://chivs01aleph02.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com:8991/F/PI2C7G89SVHGIE5NT3ED24HSUPV9L85EKMUE5HFGCKPHRPF713-25159?func=find-b&request=french+revolution&find_code=WRD&adjacent=N&local_base=EMU01PUB&x=18&y=9

Here are additional more issues I have encountered as I try to get ready for the fall:

1) Discover-E – cannot request a book for reserve (I can via Euclid, but there, I often cannot find the book in a search—so that means that I need to do two searches and move between Euclid and Dis in order to find a book and then order it for my reserve list.) In Euclid, I cannot request E-reserve for chapters or a series of pages anymore, just the book. Generally, I do not put bks on reserve, but instead a chapter on E-Reserves.

2) Discover-E -The drop down window (“all items,” “video,” audio,”) above the searching window obscures the searching window of Discover-E in both Int Exp and Firefox. Thus I cannot see what I have typed. I do not know if this weblink will replicate the problem on your screen, but this is an unusable screen for me. http://discovere.emory.edu:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=discovere The “Libraries” drop downs in the upper right hand corner are also incomplete and one cannot click on them.

3) Discover-E and Euclid – cannot indicate that a bk is missing from the shelves. I have a # of such bks to flag to circulation.

4) Have been unable to renew the books I have checked out via either program. The program just spins and spins and then gives me an error message.

5) Digital editions – I cannot get Adobe Digital to work on my laptop (and I did do the troubleshooting on their website). It will not allow me to create an Adobe ID. Thus, I cannot download or open the file for John Barrell’s Spirit of Despotism, which I plan to use this fall for both classes. I suspect that if I am having problems, my students also will.

Thank you again for your interest – all best – Judith

I am a faculty member, and I have just spent 25 (!) minutes trying to add a single DVD item to my reserves list. I "discovered" (pun intended) that neither Discover E or Euclid is tied directly to the reserves system. This has produced enormously time consuming and awkward "solutions" to what is clearly a design flaw. I finally was reduced to calling the reserves librarian directly--.
Discover E makes it very hard to determine whether a specific item is actually in the catalogue. That would seem to be a big problem. Also a big problem, to reiterate, is that faculty have to back into reserves requests with 3 or 4 additional steps than were present within the old system.
What I say is in no way a reflection on the skill and courtesy of the dedicated librarians who are trying valiantly to make an obviously poorly designed system work for patrons. Thank God for them.

If I sound upset, it is because I am at this point. I have worked with this system for weeks finding more and more problems with it.. No one needs routine tasks made more burdensome. The point of new technology should be to make access and use easier. Quite clearly, this choice of technologies was poorly done. Whose decision was it?

Thanks for your hard work on making this search system better! Here are my thoughts:
1) If DiscoverE pulls up an item, it needs to be really clear if Emory holds an item or not. It should say whether it does or does not.

2) It should be as easy to locate a single book with a known title on DiscoverE as on Euclid. Example: A professor recommended a book called "Religion of the Gods." For some reason I couldn't figure out if it was lost or checked out (never mind that). Anyway, I asked one of the lib techs to look--he put those words into DiscoverE and then wanted lots more info to pin down which reference it was--apparently he got a long list. I said, "search in Euclid, you'll get exactly one--the right one." He did. And he did.

3) wouldn't it be great if DiscoverE was BETTER than Euclid? A friend wanted me to scan something from KTU-2. I knew that stood for Keilschrifttexte aus Ugarit, but when I searched under that (Euclid and DiscoverE) I got nada. So I asked her for the precise name. She emailed me the listing. "Keilschrifttexte aus Ugarit" was listed as an alternative title. Wouldn't it be great if typing it in had brought me something other than "0" in either search system? (or even KTU--wouldn't that be fine)?

Thanks! I'll pass on more thoughts if I come up with any. Appreciate your listening.