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Category: Tools and Technology

Endeca Making More Inroads Into Libraries

Published by Iris on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

Search and discovery is changing rapidly in libraries. Last January the North Carolina State University Libraries overlaid their ILS with an Endeca-powered search interface (here’s their catalog, and here’s their announcement from last January). This caused quite a bit of talk about dis-integrating out library systems and was a key feature in my research into the future of the catalog (see my list of related posts below).

Since then the NextGen Catalog listserv has undertaken to plan out the catalog of the future and WorldCat has gone open-access and web 2.0-ish.

And last night, ResourceShelf alerted me to the fact that McMaster has just overlaid their catalog with Endeca (Endeca press release here and McMaster’s news item here). If this trend continues I see three possible futures for our catalogs: our ILS vendors will improve their search interfaces, third party search vendors will get better and better at working with MARC and library ILSs, or (best of all) both the previous two will happen and libraries will have a real choice in search and discovery systems and functionality for the first time.

Related posts:

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Blogarific Developments

Published by Iris on Friday, October 6th, 2006

As part of the strategic plan development we went through at the end of last year, the library staff decided to go about watching trends and developments in library land more intentionally than we have been so far. Like most librarians, we do our best to keep up with developments, but we wanted a way to learn from each other and to make sure that we collectively watch topics that are of interest to the library as a whole. So each department came up with a list of potential “watch list” topics and then we narrowed it down to “only” 38 topics. Now all we needed was a place to gather all of our watching and learning in one place.

Enter the Library Watch List Blog. (I would link to it, but it’s password protected, so there’s no point.) We had an all-staff training session on basic WordPress blogging and then divvied up the topics so that even though we can each write about any topic, we also have someone responsible for each of the topics. And today, I posted to it for the first time (and I’m the 8th post).

I sure hope this blog takes off, not only because it’ll be a fabulous resource but also because it’ll give us a chance to learn collaboratively from each other while simultaneously practicing some social software use. It may be hard for some people, though. It takes a good bit of time, and blogging is completely foreign to some staff members (I know that I would have been pretty hesitant a year ago). Still, I think there’s a good chance that some people will really take to it, and I look forward to learning from my co-workers.

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WorldCat Wikified?

Published by Iris on Friday, October 6th, 2006

The Next-Generation Catalog listserv (ngc4lib) has been imagining and planning the catalog of the future. Lately, they’ve started bringing cataloging into the discussion, arguing that catalogs and cataloging, search and metadata, are inseparable. We can’t really overhaul the catalog without at least examining cataloging and MARC to make sure that we create fully exploitable metadata and then exploit it fully using the next generation of search systems.

The newest development in the debate between local and union catalogs is an idea to combine the best of both worlds. What if there was a core of authority controlled records (from WorldCat and others) overlaid with a wiki-like structure that would allow catalogers from all over enrich the records?

This layered service would have all the multi-faceted richness of collaboratively-produced union catalog and would increase efficiency by reducing the duplication in effort by millions of catalogers. It would also have to be filterable down to local holdings and possibly only the record enhancements needed or wanted by local catalogers.

Needless to say, this has sparked a lively discussion. Some people worry that allowing general modification to the wikified records would result in less authoritative records, while others argue just as vehemently that records would end up no worse than they are already.

As with most other discussion on this list, this particular debate is raging over a structure and service that does not yet exist. But it is fascinating to watch people negotiate their visions of the future and, in the process, uncover and define the fundamentals of good catalogs.

For those who are interested, this list is open to all, and instructions for signing up (as well as list archives) are located here. Also, the members have begun building a wiki to track the conclusions of their discussions. You can see this developing resource here.

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