Chapter 8: MyI Categories
Warning: This page has not been updated to iVia version 5.
MyI Categories are descriptors assigned to resources in order to create pathfinders or subject guides: informal lists of resources relevant to a particular topic, campus or organization. These lists are created by adding MyI Category names like LC-econ or UCR-ACCESS-TELNET to the resource descriptions. The records can subsequently be retrieved and displayed by iVia canned_search searches (see Appendix A: Canned Search).
MyI Categories are independent of the top-level Categories like Electronic Journals and Government Publications. These top-level categories are rarely changed, have fixed collection policies, and are maintained by all the adders. In contrast, MyI Categories can be quickly and easily created by individual adders or institutions, and can be used for many different purposes.
An Introduction to MyI Categories
The main purpose of MyI Categories is to create a specialized sub-collection of INFOMINE records that are useful to particular groups of Library patrons. For example, the UCR Library maintains a range of subject guides to on-line databases and resources. Each Subject is a different MyI Category: for example, resources relevant to music are in the MyI Category ucr-db-music. To retrieve this list of resources, we can create an INFOMINE search like this one:
http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/canned_search?fields=mi&query=ucr-db-music
Note that this search explicitly states that we are searching in the MyI field (this is what the "fields=mi" part of the URL means). If you were to type ucr-db-newspapers into the search box on the main page of INFOMINE, you would get no results because the MyI field is not searched by default. You can use the INFOMINE Canned Search Query Generator to construct queries on the MyI field.
Assigning MyI Categories in the record editor
The one place where every INFOMINE Adder will encounter MyI Categories is the INFOMINE record editor. Every INFOMINE record has a MyI field which contains a semi-colon-delimited list of MyI Category names. If you open the record editor, you should see a row like this one under the Annotation field:
This record (number 24658) is a member of exactly one MyI category: CSUF-MC-HISAM. To change it, click on the List choices button on the right, and you will be presented with a list of the MyI Categories in a new window.
The MyI Categories window lists all the categories that are available to the current user. If the current record belongs to category, a tick will be placed alongside it (as for CSUF-MC-HISAM). The list you see will probably be different from this one because MyI Categories are constantly being added and deleted, and because some are institution-specific: for example, REFACRON, REFACT, and REFACRON are only available to adders from UCR. (Access restrictions are discussed in more detail below.)
You can add the record to one (or more) of the MyI Categories listed by checking the appropriate check boxes and pressing the Update button. Similarly, you can remove the record from a category by unchecking it in the category list and pressing Update.
Note that just because you can add to a category, it does not mean that you should. As a general rule, if you do not know what a MyI Category is for, you should not add any records to it. If you think a record belongs in a particular MyI Category, you should ask the category maintainer before adding the record to it (unless the category description explicitly states otherwise).
Viewing the MyI Categories
Editors with sufficient privileges can see a list of all the MyI Categories by logging into the main iVia Database Manager and clicking on the MyI button, which looks like this:
If you cannot see this option then you don't have access to create new MyI Categories, but you are still able to use existing MyI Categories. If you want to create MyI Categories but are unable to, please contact Julie Mason (jmason@ucrac1.ucr.edu) or Margaret Mooney (mmooney@ucrac1.ucr.edu).
Clicking on the MyI button from the front page takes you to the main MyInfomine page. From here you can view the full list of categories, add new categories, and add large batches records to particular categories. To view the complete list, click on the "View categories" button:
The full list of categories is shown on the "View MyI Categories" page, a small part of which is shown below.
The first three columns show the Name, Description, and Maintainer of the category. From this excerpt we can see that the CSUF-MC-ASIAM MyI Category is for Asian American Resources--College Level and is maintained by Kimberley Robles Smith (kimberle). The fourth column, marked Public, has value true if any adder can add resources to the category, and false if access is restricted to specific institutions or persons. The last column, marked Action, contains buttons that let you View any category (shown) and Edit or Delete the MyI Category if you are the Maintainer.
Viewing a record shows a more detailed view of the category, like this:
The Access Restrictions indicate that this category is not public: it may only be used by adders from the campus CSUF (CSU, Fresno).
Creating MyI Categories
To create a new MyI Category, return to the MyI Categories menu and click on the "Add a category" button:
A new window is created that lets you fill in the new MyI Category's Name, Description and Access specifications, as follows:
Access restrictions are quite simple. If the new category is public then everyone may add records to it. If it is not, you must specify a the users who may add to it. This can be done by providing a semi-colon-separated list of users or by selecting one or more institutions whose adders my update the category. In this case, both options are used: the UCR-OCEANIA category is restricted to the user whose login name is jsmith and to anyone from UC Riverside.
Naming MyI Categories
There are no strict rules about naming MyI Categories, but here are a few conventions you are asked to attempt to follow:
- Try not to use any unusual letters or punctuation in MyI Category names. Numbers, letters and hyphens are almost always safe, though space characters may also be used (as in the NC Government category).
- Canned searches are case-insensitive, so it does not matter if your name is in upper, lower or mixed case. Use whichever you prefer.
- MyI Categories should begin with your institution code. For example, the UCR Library Subject Database about about Dance is named UCR-DB-Dance.
- If you are creating a MyI Category for a specific class, prefix it with your Institution and class name. For example UDM-edu459 is an Education class at the University of Detroit, Mercy.
- If you want to make a hierarchy of MyI Categories, see the instructions below.
Hierarchies of MyI Categories
Some people have expressed an interest in building "hierarchies" of categories. For example, kimberle wanted to create a category for Multicultural and Diversity Resources for CSUF, and to further divide this MyI Category into sub-categories for African American Resources, Asian American Resources, and so on. In order to do so, she created five MyI Categories, as follows:
- CSUF-MC
- Multicultural/Diversity Resources
- CSUF-MC-AFRAM
- African American Resources
- CSUF-MC-ASIAM
- Asian American Resources
- CSUF-MC-EURAM
- European American Resources
- CSUF-MC-HISAM
- Hispanic American Resources
- CSUF-MC-MDEAM
- Arab & Muslim American Resources
- CSUF-MC-NATAM
- Native American Resources
When new resources are found, any that apply to one (or more) of the six sub-categories is added to that sub-category, and only general diversity resources are added to CSUF-MC. We can find resources that are in CSUF-MC by searching for it, and resources on any of sub-categories by searching for them. For example, a search for CSUF-MC-EURAM will find European American Resources.
However, the category names in these hierarchies are carefully chosen to have the same prefix. This allows us to take advantage of iVia's prefix-search ability. Suppose we want to search for the records that are in either CSUF-MC or one of the six sub-categories: then we perform a prefix search for CSUF-MC*. In fact, we can also search for records that are in the six sub-categories but not the CSUF-MC by searching for CSUF-MC-*.
Adding batches of records to MyI Categories
Adding records to MyI Categories using the record editor is practical when only a few records are involved, but quickly becomes tedious if you want to add dozens of records to a category. For this reason we have implemented a special canned_search theme that lets adders perform a search on the live database, select items from the result set, and add all the selected items to a MyI Category.
The search interface is available from the main MyI page; the form looks very like a standard canned search, but the Item Display option is set to my_infomine:
In this example, the user has entered a search for New Zealand or Australia on the Subject, Keyword and Title field in the Maps & GIS top-level category. The user clicks on the Search button, and the search results are displayed on a new page.
The search results appear between three special boxes that describe the three steps that are necessary to add a batch of records to a category:
The first step is to choose a MyI Category by clicking on the "Categories" button and choosing one (or more) from the available list. Here, the user has selected the UCR-OCEANIA MyI Category.
Step 2 is to select the records you wish to add.
The buttons in the figure above let you select all the search results (or clear the selections), but in most cases you will want to be more selective.
Here is an example of what a search result looks like: Note that the records current MyI Categories are listed (in this case there is one, Maps On-line) and that there is a check box, labelled Add To MyI, alongside the result:
If you wish to add the record to the MyI Category, check this box, so that it appears like the rightmost example below:
Generally, you will want to work through the result set selecting only those records that should be added to the MyI Category. (Note that if a record already belongs to a MyI Category, adding it again has no effect.)
When you have selected all the appropriate records, go on to the third box at the bottom of the page:
To finish adding the records, click on the button marked Update the selected records with new MyI Categories. If you do not click on this button, none of your changes will take effect.
Clicking on the button will bring up a new page, like the one below, showing which records have been updated.
Finally, it often helps to exclude from your search any records that are already in the MyI Category you are interested in. For example, suppose we want to search for new pages to add to UCR-OCEANIA. Then we might search for "South Pacific" and not UCR-OCEANIA, like this:
Note that this search includes the MyI category.
Keeping categories up-to-date when new records are added to the live database
The main MyI page also contains an interface that lets you add recently-created records to your MyI Category:
When you click on a top-level Category name (or on New records from all categories) you are presented with a list of the records that have been added in the last 20 days. (You can change the number of days in the form).
These records can be added to MyI Categories using the same interface as the search results described above.
Using MyI Categories in canned_search output
Another use of MyI Categories is to mark resources for special display with a canned_search theme (see Appendix B: Institutional co-branding with themes).
As an example, we will consider UCR's use of MyI Categories to describe the type of media for local resources. UCR has several MyI Categories that describe access to a resource, including UCR-ACCESS-CD-ROM (records that are on CD-ROM) and UCR-ACCESS-EMAIL (web sites that will let you perform searches then email you the results). When search results are displayed using the ucr_library theme, icons and text are used to present this information.
This output is possible because each time canned_search outputs a result, it creates a special macro corresponding to each MyI Category for that record. For example, the category UCR-ACCESS-CD-ROM is represented by the macro $MI_UCR_ACCESS_CD_ROM. We can add functions to our output templates to check whether these macros are created, and act accordingly. For example, the snippet
$IFDEF($MI_UCR_ACCESS_CD_ROM) <img src="/images/cdrom.gif"> $ENDIF
$IFDEF($MI_UCR_ACCESS_EMAIL) <img src="/images/email.gif"> $ENDIF
will display a CD-ROM icon if the $MI_UCR_ACCESS_CD_ROM macro has been set and an email icon if the $MI_UCR_ACCESS_EMAIL macro has been set.