Features

Librarian Features

Web Page Publishing made simple
Creating course and subject guides from a menu of choices is a snap-just edit and add reusable modules, Library à la Carte’s building blocks. Collaborate with other users to create modules and pages. Then publish to a portal page all through a Web browser.

Create Custom Content
The easy to use Web-based text editor lets you edit text, add images, embed media, create links, and much more just like writing a document in a word-processor. Code view gives advanced editors direct access to the HTML.

Collaborate
Share pages, guides and modules with other users to create content together. Sharing gives editing rights to other users and allows others to reuse content on their guides.

Copy and Reuse
Reuse your modules across multiple pages and guides. Changing the content in one place changes it everywhere it is being used. Or, copy your modules, pages or guides and create new content from the template. Make your modules global to let all users copy and use on their guides.

Publish / Unpublish / Archive
Click a button to publish a guide to a portal page. Unpublish or archive just as easily. Archived guides have their own page linked from the main portal page. Group your guides under a topic or course to help students find them easier.

Tags
Tag your guides to help students find it and others like it. Tags are displayed in the portal pages’ tag cloud and at the bottom of each guide.

Modern & Intuitive Interface
Library à la Carte has been designed from the start to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. The interface includes Inline help, drag and drop functionality, and easy to use forms.

Student Features

Portal Pages
Course and subject guides’ portal pages list all published guides, connects to reference staff or subject librarians through links or embedded chat, and provides information about the guides for students, instructors and librarians. Browse guides by A-Z, subjects, course, or tags. Search across all guides using a Google Custom Search Box.

Print, Connect and Bookmark
Every guide contains a print view for easy printing, a link to the creator's email and a last update date to keep content current. Each guide also contains a link to all the popular bookmarking sites.

RSS Syndication
Every Guide provides syndicated content with built-in RSS functionality. This lets students subscribe to guides for the latest information delivered right to them.

Comments
Encourage students to post feedback, useful resources and other information. Automatic URL creation makes links clickable in the comments. Students can leave an email viewed only by the librarian. Email can be previewed and inappropriate comments removed from within the tool.

Look and Feel
Tabbed content and a module template chunks information into bite-size pieces.

Related Content
Help students find new and related information. Links to related subject and course guides aid discovery of useful resources.

Helpful Information
To aid guide selection, a brief description of the guides is included in the search results after a keyword or tag search. Links provide hover text to offer helpful information.

Module Features

On The Menu:

  • Librarian Profile
  • Comments
  • RSS Feeds
  • Multi-Media Widgets
  • Custom Content
  • Databases
  • Course Reserves
  • Instructor Profile
  • Attachments
  • Images
  • YouTube Videos
  • Catalog Books
  • Web Links
  • Quizzes

Librarian and Instructor Profiles
Connect to students though email, embedded chat, office hours and location, chat names and websites. Embed an image or a social media badge to personalize your guides.

Mutli-Media Widgets
Embed chat widgets, delicious tags, or Facebook badges. Display slideshows, LibraryThing recommendations, and many other Web 2.0 elements.


Course Reserves
Automatically pull in course reserves for a course or instructor from III OPAC. Display title, call number and author with links to the item record.


Databases
System level control over database title and URL. Change it once and all guides are updated. Librarians can alter a databases description and provide more information for the students. Add a proxy URL to help students access licensed databases.

Attachments
Upload documents and other media to the server with easy to use controls. Link to documents so students can download from the guides.

RSS Feeds
Use RSS feeds to refresh your guides’ content with little work. Add your RSS feeds or search for feeds to add by keyword or site. Display feeds in tabbed or aggregated format. Add a Google RSS search box that returns results right to the guide and select the number of feeds you want displayed.

Images
This module offers multiple ways to enhance your guides with images. You can add an URL to an image or upload images from your computer. Or search for and embed Flickr images into your guides. Adding Flickr images includes the required link back to the site and the description of the image.

YouTube Videos
Search for and embed Youtube videos into your guides. This module will make it easier to find and add videos from YouTube.

Catalog Search
Search for and embed book information from a III catalog. This module will let you build a list of recommended books from the catalog or add URLs to books elsewhere. A book cover jacket will be included if one can be found and a link to the full or partial text on Goggle if it exists.

Web Links
This module will let you build a list of links.

Quizzes
Create multiple-choice, True/False or Free Write questions and add them to a guide or tutorial. The quizzes can be graded or not and can have points assigned to them or not. Note: Graded quizzes can only be added to tutorials.

Admin Features

System administration and customization
Easy to add and manage users, and delete, archive or reassign guides. Customize guide templates through a web browser. Add your own banner, logo, links, and search engines by filling out a form.

Cross-browser compatibility
All you need is a Web browser -- any Web browser. Library à la Carte works across all operating systems (Windows and Mac) and across all major browsers.

Search Engine Optimizations
Standards-based mark-up, clean code, 301 redirection, robots.txt, easy Google Analytics integration, meta tag editing on every page, and friendly URLS make sure your guides get great rankings.

Small Footprint, Unlimited Functionality and Free
A default install of Library à la Carte takes just over 70MB of disk space, Ruby takes 250MB. Because Library à la Carte is open source and allows access to the code, the functionality is virtually unlimited. And, it is free under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Authentication and Authorization
Built in user account creation, roles and account managment.

Database Management
Add or edit the course subjects, guide master subjects and database subscription from the admin interface. This will enable admins to manage some of the database tables through a web form.