Where can I find this book? Floor plan maps in the catalog

It is always fun helping a friend at another school find information via their library’s website.  I guess it would be like visiting England or Australia where they speak the same language, but the accent is just a bit different. Anyway, I discovered a very cool finding aid to help users locate items in the stacks.

Check it out. Go to FSU’s Library site  and search for something.  Cloning is always my default keyword.

You’ll see something like this:

When you click on “map” you get this:

It’s a great concept. Maybe all the catalogs are doing this these days—I have not been following the talk about 2.0 OPACs but this helps with a common challenge: finding books in the stacks. So I commend FSU for this. However, I tried to use their “texting” feature and after 2 hours it still has not arrived.  

Follow-up:
So on a hunch I looked at several other Florida universities since I know they use the same catalog. Here are more examples of map/floor plan layouts that are linked out via the catalog: UF, USF, FGCU,FAU, UNF, UWF, UCF

You’ll find a lot of variation, but… FSU trumps them all with their low-tech image simply because it provides an indication of where the book can be found.  99% of the time I side with form over function, but this is one of those rare cases where 1% wins out. I like their map because it shows me where about on the floor I can find the book.

Comments

[Marina]

Brian, I've worked with FCLA on this mapping function and all the institutions have decided to go about it in different ways as you mentioned. I believe that FIU is actually working on a very cool GPS type system. Here is a link to a demo of what the functionality of the gadget will look like once the project is complete.
http://screencast.com/t/YyGIY9t4uwV

[brian mathews]

Marina,
Thanks for the info. FIU's project does look very cool. I imagine one day stacks will be labeled in a way that users will know to look for row 5, shelf 3 or there abouts to find their book. Thanks for sharing! Oh and you know, I still prefer WebLUIS to what you guys are using now, the good old days.

[Cindy C]

Brian, Wichita State University Libraries has also used dynamic mapping for the past couple of years. The folks in charge are now working on switching to 3-D maps. http://libcat.wichita.edu/

[Brian Mathews]

Cindy, very cool. I saw two types of maps on the Wichita site-- I really liked the 3D model found on this title: Gene cloning

Thanks for sharing.

[Ilene Frank]

About location mapping: It's still just where the book is supposed to be, isn't it. It's not necessarily where the book has gotten to, huh? (Brian, a lot of us in Florida still miss WebLUIS. boo hoo!)

[Roman Koshykar]

This is a feature we've offered at RIT for quite some time, though I agree that FSU has a very elegant solution, by automatically highlighting the section on the map.

Here's how we handle this (rather underutilized) feature:

http://albert.rit.edu/record=b1955378~S3

Notice that "3rd Floor" under Location is a link; clicking the link pulls up a map of the 3rd floor of our library - however, in order to find the appropriate section, a user must select "Circulating Books QD-TK" from the Areas of Interest menu to the right of the map.

I'd love to know if there's an easy way to automate this, so I can pass it on to our systems librarian.

[Ellen]

We've got a similar setup to RIT.

http://bearcat.baylor.edu/record=b2299609~S7

except it puts an arrow to your section. (Though, it doesn't do it for all our locations. That reminds me, I've always meant to ask our tech folks why not...)

[isabel espinal]

thanks for posting this. it's one of my frustrations with many catalogs - they don't tell the user where to go for particular items within their huge libraries.

another thing i like about these results displays is the very clear "RefWorks" link.