LinkOut Icons Not Ready
The other day I blogged that the library icons could be displayed at the top of the PubMed citation while in Abstract Plus mode. Well it appears that I jumped the gun. Quite a few people have been discussing on MEDLIB-L that their library icons were not displaying according to what the NLM Technical Bulletin described.
Apparently, NLM wasn't ready before it posted the article in the technical bulletin. According to an email posted to the MEDLIB-L list "There has not been an internal announcement yet as to when the Beta version with the LO icon change will be implemented. We are vigorously testing and the hope is by the end of this week. We try to post changes in the Technical Bulletin prior to release to give NLM users warning." We are to look for a red "Try Beta" icon at the top of the PubMed page when this service is available.
Wow this is kind of poor communication and planning. The article in the technical bulletin implies this feature is already done. "We are pleased to announce that the AbstractPlus Display in PubMed has been updated to include one library icon above the list of Related Links." There is no mention of beta nor a mention of it being forthcoming. Why post such an article if it isn't ready yet!?
While I am pleased that this change will be comming, I am equally confused and frustrated that they sort of mislead us to believe it was available and working.
1 Comments:
Thanks for blogging this. In the past, NLM has clearly marked in Technical Bulletin articles that a feature is "coming soon." All of a sudden, after this article appeared and people started asking why the change did not appear, they are saying, "Well, we publish things in the Technical Bulletin to give librarians a heads up." What?? While we appreciate any information NLM sends our way, we do need them to be CLEAR in their communications. We rely on the Technical Bulletin to clearly state what's going on. This is doubly true in this case because there are institutions out there with icons that are slightly bigger (or smaller) than the 100x25 pixels who are wondering if the change didn't happen for them because of the size of their icons. Obviously, this particular article should have clearly said, "Coming soon."rjdsj
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