What you have told us
Here you can search through numerous patron comments and the corresponding AADL replies. Search by the type of comment, in general by what the comment is regarding, or by a particular issue.
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Filter Patron Comments
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: Please don't change your cataloging away from the Dewey decimal system. I enjoy going to the library but will stop it that system is implemented.
AADL Reply: While we are looking at alternative ways of displaying non-fiction materials, nothing we might choose to do would result in a sudden elimination of the Dewey System. I do hope that you would continue to enjoy using the public library no matter what changes might be made in the cataloging. Thanks for letting us know of your concerns. Sincerely, Josie Parker Director
Date Received: 2013-05-27
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: I found your previous catalog search facility to be very cumbersome; much inferior to any I was familiar with It was with some interest, that I used your new facilty. The words unacceptable, unbelievable quickly come to mind. Searching by the title London (by Edward Rutherfurd) none of the first fifty entries display this book (which the library has) and very few even started with the word London. When searching for the author Mc Caulay, Rose the first responses were for various rapper starting with MC. All other libraries I have used seem to possess a competant search process. It is almost beyond belief that yours is so imprecise. A complete waste money.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us. We're sorry you're running into trouble with the catalog. Nothing has changed recently other than the layout of the search box; the search engine has not been altered. That said, with a word like London that appears in the title of over 13,000 items in the collection, it's difficult for the system to know what you're looking for without further information. When you know the author as in this case, you might just try a keyword search for london rutherfurd or even london edward, which puts the desired item at #2: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/keyword/london%20edward As for Dame Rose Macaulay, unfortunately we don't have any items of hers in the collection. You can find some of her titles here in melcat: http://elibrary.mel.org/search~S15?/amacaulay%2C+rose/amacaulay+rose/1%2C4%2C137%2CB/exact&FF=amacaulay+rose+dame&1%2C100%2C However, in this case, I suspect the problem was the space you used between Mc and Caulay. Mc and Mac do not typically have a space before the rest of the surname, getting you all those rap results, which are most of the items in our catalog that contain the word MC. I hope this is helpful information; thank you very much for your patience, and thanks for using your library. -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2011-12-12
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: Your catalog is the most difficult I have encountered . You need to hire a competent programer.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us! We're sorry you feel that way. Is there anything in particular with which you're running into trouble? Any details or suggestions you can give will help us to continue improving the catalog. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for using your library. -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2011-05-24
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: Why did you remove the publishing dates from the books and records? This makes it that much more inconvenient when looking at the catalog. You already decided that putting the materials in order of release was a bad idea and now this? Who is making these decisions that fly in the face of common sense? I am sensing a change in the decision making abilities at the library and it continues to baffle.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us. We're sorry you've been inconvenienced by these changes. The pub date is still on the full record pages, it just doesn't show on the hitlist, because it was part of the publisher line, which no-one otherwise needed in the hitlist. However, we'll find a place to put the pub date back on the hitlist page. As for order of release, most searches aren't looking for items in order of release, so that didn't make sense for a default sort. However, you can still choose "pub date: newest" (or oldest) from the sort at the top of your search to sort your results in order of newest or oldest release first. I hope this information is helpful to you; stay tuned for the pub date back in result lists, and let us know if you have any other questions or trouble. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for using your library! -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2011-01-30
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: First, I love AADL & use your services extensively. These are my two problems: 1) when searching the catalog, all maner of extraneous mayerials show up. Example: try searching Lewsis Comfort Tiffany. Annoying. 2) though our library has extensive art materials, I cannot find any audio-visual aids for stained glass & apparently cannot access same through MeL. Drat! I hesitate to purchase, not knowing what I'll get. Maybe you could purchase 1-2? Thanks - for all you do.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us with your feedback. We're sorry you've had trouble obtaining the items you're looking for. First, it looks like the first problem is simply a misspelling; our catalog casts about to find things that match any of your keywords if it can't find anything that matches all your keywords. In this case, the first name is actually Louis, and if you search for louis comfort tiffany, you get a nice set of our 15 items on Tiffany: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/keyword/louis%20comfort%20tiffany However, this is an excellent example of less is more. You could have avoided the issue altogether by simply searching for comfort tiffany, which gets the same 15 items: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/keyword/comfort%20tiffany I hope that's helpful information. As for stained glass on video, you're right that we don't have any items in that area. What might be the best solution would be for you to find an item that would meet your needs on amazon and then suggest that we purchase that item via our contact us page; we generally buy most patron suggestions, and that way you'll likely get what you're looking for. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for using your library! -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2010-09-29
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: Please fix your catalog so that if a user searches by location – only those books actually available at that location appear in search results.
AADL Reply: This comment was submitted anonymously.
Date Received: 2009-12-21
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: First of all you all do a terrific job and I would not exist without your books, God bless you. I have a suggestion, when you look up DVDs in the catalog for instance Inspector Lynley series it has the same description for all the DVDs so I can't remember the title if I saw it or not so it make additional work for you. thanks
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us. We do add the description for each specific volume to the end of the description; you can see that the description of the actual episode is the last paragraph of the description here: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1318147 vs. here: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1318148 Is this what you were looking for? Are there copies that don't have this? Please let us know and we can investigate further. Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for using the library! -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2009-12-20
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: I am not able to search for movies because your website is bad and extremely unclear. You should have a more clear way of searching for books and movies. What the hell is this "catologue" and "exhibit" crap or whatever.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us. We're sorry you've had a hard time using our website. I think all you need to know is that the catalog is our catalog of the items we have for you to check out. Just click on catalog, and then enter your search for books, or movies, or music. I hope this is helpful to you; thanks for your patience and please let us know if you have any other questions or trouble. -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2009-12-04
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: In my opinion, your newly-reconfigured online catalog is inferior to the old one. Here's an example. I looked up books by the novelist Iain Banks. The catalog lists all his books under this name although he writes science fiction under the name Iain M. Banks. Much more annoying, though, is that when I did my search, using "Banks, Iain" as Author, a large number of unrelated authors of books on unrelated subjects (including nonfiction) were listed in addition to the holdings by Iain Banks. This has happened with my searches of other authors. It should not be this difficult to do a search of a particular author's books.
AADL Reply: Hello, thanks for contacting us. We're sorry you've had trouble with the catalog. Our records do indeed have all of Iain Banks' works under "Iain Banks" regardless of whether or not he included the M. Library catalogs tend to want to consolidate all an author's writings under one name even if they use permutations of their names. However, all you need to do to see all of our items by Ian Banks, regardless of the M is to simply enter Iain Banks as your search terms. There's no need to select author. You get this: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/keyword/iain%20banks Which shows the 20 items we have in our collection that he worked on, regardless of whether or not he used the M. I'm unable to recreate the problem you described with the author search: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/search/author/banks%2C%20iain If you can provide details of other searches that haven't worked well for you, we can investigate further. We're always working to improve the search performance, so any details are helpful. Thanks for your patience, and please let us know if you have any further questions or trouble. -eli Eli Neiburger Associate Director for IT and Production Ann Arbor District Library
Date Received: 2009-10-02
Type: complaint
Regarding: catalog/searching
Patron Comment: Could I have a card catalog, please? Your computer is ridiculous – I typed in an author’s name and it gave me 6000 entries!
AADL Reply: This comment was submitted anonymously.