IVCC GOES E-CATALOG:
WHAT, WHY...
AND HOW GOOD IT'S BEEN!
Tracy Morris, Illinois Valley Community College
Greg Soare, Leepfrog Technology
What is the e-catalog?
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Electronic catalog through CourseLeaf software
(Leepfrog Technologies)
Catalog.ivcc.edu
Matches the look and feel of our catalog—but
slightly different to set it apart
Interactive search capability
Able to be printed (coming in November)
Able to be viewed on an iPad, mobile phone, and
other portable technologies
Catalog page
Web page
Why move to an e-catalog?
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Over 4,000 catalogs that are out of date in a
storage room on campus
We had a partial PDF—not a full catalog online
Students were asking for electronic version
Catalog process was inefficient
Prior catalog process
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Hard copies of the current catalog distributed to
“owners” with post it notes
Owners would write the answers in the book
One person would input all the changes
Sent for editing to the owners
Multiple formats—some in PDF, some in access
database, some in word
Difficult to track who had completed their work
New catalog process
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A “staging” catalog is built. Editors and approvers
are assigned to each page.
When editors are finished with a page, a click of a
bright green button moves the process to the
approver.
Approver gets an email with a link.
They review and make changes. A click of the
button moves the process to the registrar (our final
editor)
How did we do it?
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Buy in established
RFP process—need to know what you want, be
clear/specific (6 months—this is NOT the norm!)
CourseLeaf set up the initial site (6 weeks)
Training onsite (2 days)
Monitor the progress on the snapshot bar
2
months for editing of pages
 5 months for course descriptions
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Going live—1/2 day
Challenges
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RFP process
Timing—looking at course descriptions in the
summer (no faculty on campus)
Thinking through things ahead of time
 Table
of Content
 What happened to “this page”
 Sharing pages vs. not sharing pages
How good has it been?
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Training
Implementation
Limited intervention from our IT staff
Going “live”
Updating
Feedback from editors and authors
Jalot—support service system
Jalot – support system
Behind the Scenes – part 1
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Kickoff/Info Gather
IT – Datatel export, Authentication
Pilot Migration
Consultation/Onsite Meeting
Adjust/Customize
Complete Migration
Behind the Scenes – part 2
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Setup Catalog – Links, Connections
Workflow
Style
Look and Feel – Website, PDF
Training – key goal is acceptance
Easy to monitor
Simple to Track Changes
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View or hide…
Track by user
Color coded
Easy to Create Tables
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Point n Click
Formatted
Entry fields
Connected to Datatel
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Integrate from Datatel
Detects Inconsistencies
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Error reports
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Line item checks
Effective Workflow
Friendly Search Engine
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Focused
Summarized
Linked
More Info if you Click
Other features…
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Click-to-Print functionality
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I-Books—check it out!
IS IT WORTH IT?
ABSOLUTELY!
Words of Wisdom..plan ahead and allow extra time!
QUESTIONS ?
Tracy Morris, Illinois Valley Community College
Greg Soare, Leepfrog Technologies