Andrew Pace
Showed a timeline of library automation (that started on 1936!)
Where are we?
- the rfp has not evolved
- the traditional ILS system is a legacy system
- new innovation requires new technology
Discussed the current state of the ILS
what ILS catalogs do well:
- inventory control
- known item searching
what ILS catalogs don’t do well:
- any search other than known item
- anything other than books and journals
- logical groupings of results
- faceted searching
- relevance ranking
- sideways searching (suggestions, expansion of searches and search targets)
NextGen library search tools: lots of them… including worldcat, clustered searching, endeca, open sources, etc…
a few words about nextgen and 2.0:
- they are adjectives for libraries and systems
- not our patrons – they are already there
To our customers, search looks like Google and iTunes and flickr
what is faceted navigation?
- Sounds like boolean and limiting to me…
- gave examples – narrow by category at amazon, clusty’s sidebar narrowing, etc
Needle Library, Haystack College is using ExLibris (look at it)
Existing catalogs are hard to use:
- lots of topical searches and poor subject access
- keyword doesn’t work well
- relevance is really just system sort order in library catalogs
- unforgiving on spelling errors or stemming
- response time is bad
explained why NCSU wanted a new catalog…
showed a screencast of an NCSU catalog search
Most of their users are doing basic keyword searching – about 1/3 are choosing the refinements (mostly subject refinements)
usability testing:
- relevance ranking is key
- only 13% went to page two!
- faceted navigation is intuitive
- beware of library jargon
- user behavior is influenced by previous experience
Interesting tidbits:
- keyword searching up 230%
- authority searching is down 45%
Future opportunities
- integrate catalog with other tools through web services
- enrich catalog with external web services – book jackets, etc
- build cross application shopping cart functionality
Where are we headed?
- interoperability – that’d be cool… right now, it’s the exception not the rule
- web services
- 3rd parties – will become a viable source for ILS type services
- Re-integration (eventually)
- continued mergers, market consolidation, etc
- more vertical integration (portals, federated search, serials content management, etc)
- more open source, local development, and 3rd party partnerships
“Open source is more like a free kitten, not like free beer.”
Kansas Tri-Conference 2007: Day 2 – Libraries, Vendors, and the ……
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