Good Afternoon--

I am happy to announce that MaineCat will receive a facelift!

Please visit http://mainecat.maine.edu:2082/ to get a sneak peak of
the new look and feel.

We are planning on rolling out the new look early next week.

MaineCat retains nearly all of the functionality that it had before,
but now displays information in a cleaner, easier to understand way.

Apart from the new look and fixing some things that didn't work, a few
features have been added:

When looking at an item you will now see the holdings and request
status of items from the member libraries without having to 'click to
expand' holdings.

Some items will now also display book covers which are retrieved from
LibraryThing (although there are fewer book covers available through
this service than those used by URSUS or Minerva, it is free to use).

Searching now defaults to "keyword" rather than author, and the
initial drop down has been simplified. Advanced search options are
still available as part of the advanced search and as links below the
main search box.

Once we go live all existing bookmarks should work as they do now, so
there is no need to update links on your website.

Please take a look, and contact me directly if you find any errors or
encounter any problems.
Note: this preview is on a staging server that does not offer a secure
connection, so requesting and/or viewing patron records will not work,
but once live, they'll be there and function as they do now.

Best
-James
_____________________________
James M Jackson Sanborn
Executive Director, Maine InfoNet
University of Maine
5784 York Village, Suite 58
Orono, Maine 04469-5784
207-581-3083
207-356-0238 (cell)
207-581-3095 (fax)
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