Librarians are always trying to help their patrons find the highest quality resources available. As Web-based systems proliferate, that means developing tools that meet new expectations. RedLightGreen is an experiment of the Research Libraries Group (RLG—get it?) to make the huge, high-quality book collections of its member academic research libraries searchable in an interface that they say will, “look and act a lot more like Google or Amazon.com than a traditional library catalog.” It's designed for undergraduates, but everyone benefits from having this resource publicly available.
The homepage looks simple and uncluttered with a single search box (sound familiar?). An advanced search is available, but this is the web, so just enter some terms!
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Initial search page: I typed "prison nursing"
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The results are listed in order of relevance and how many libraries own the book, so you're more likely to find items that appear high in the list.
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Results: The first, about American nurses held prisoner during WWII, is not what I had in mind, but the second, Standards of Nursing Practice in Correctional Facilities, looks good.
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Links to continue your search with suggested Library of Congress subject headings, authors, and languages are provided. That allows for a more systematic and comprehensive search. In this example the initial subject suggestions were not what I wanted (e.g., World War II), but some of the books were promising. Choosing one of these retrieves that book's full record, and refines the subject suggestions accordingly. Here I see that "prison nurses" is the preferred subject heading.
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Display for my choice. The related subjects are more relevant now, e.g., nursing standards. At the bottom are results from an automatically constructed Google search using words from the book's title and author.
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There are some nice added features: RedLightGreen will provide a citation in APA format and help you check if your local library has the item (free registration required).
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Citation in computer-generated APA format. I'll make some edits like taking out the publisher's street address, and adding periods after the year and at the end of the citation.
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RedLightGreen is searching a database of forty-two million unique titles owned by its member libraries (Scott Memorial Library is not a member). Because these are mostly large university libraries—not specialized medical libraries—their holdings are not targeted at Jefferson's core disciplines. But it's a great experiment in catalog design, and a valuable catalog to be freely available to the public.
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