Disruptive Library Technology Jester » nisodiscovery2008

Video Tour of OPAC Discovery Layer Tools

Peter Murray — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:34:55 +0000

In March, I gave a presentation at the NISO forum on Next Generation Discovery Tools: New Tools, Aging Standards. For those that were there, you may remember the bulk of the presentation was in the screencast tours of the functionality of 10 OPAC enhancement tools. Topping out at over 750MB, the presentation file was too big to share, but I promised to put together a combination of the presentation audio and the screencast videos in a much more manageable size. That video, along with a cleaned up version of the audio, is posted below.

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

For more information about the presentation, including links to the 10 tools that were demonstrated, see the previous DLTJ post on the topic. Lastly, here are some links to the downloadable form of the presentations:

Presentation video (same as above, in Flash format, 90MB)
Presentation audio (MP3 format, 49MB)

Thank you to the NISO staff for making the audio available.

Update

4:10pm EDT: If you tried to watch the video prior to about 4pm EDT today (25-July-2008) and saw scrambled garbage about a quarter of the way through, please try again. In crunching the 11GB QuickTime file down to the 90MB Flash file, something went horribly wrong. The version uploaded this afternoon is better.

Links to OPAC Enhancements, Wrappers, and Replacements

Peter Murray — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:30:37 +0000

Below are the supplemental links for the presentation at the NISO workshop on discovery layers in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 28, 2008.

Update 20080404T1124 : Carolyn McCallum at Wake Forest University posted a great summary of day two of the NISO discovery layer forum, including an overview of my talk. Thanks, Carolyn!

Foundational Pieces

The presentation started as an extension of a DLTJ blog post. I also mentioned Marshal Breeding’s Library Technology Report published in July/August of 2007 and available from the ALA store.

Tour of Systems

For each of the 10 systems that were toured in the course of the presentation there is a link to the home page of the product/project and a link to a demo or canonical live example. ~~If there is interest in seeing the 2-minute screencasts that go along with each product/project, let me know in the comments or via a private note and I’ll see what I can do.~~ There is a mix of a screencast and the recorded audio of the presentation in another DLTJ posting.

Web OPAC Enhancements

Library Thing for Libraries

Homepage: http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/
Demo site: http://blais.claremont.edu/

Web OPAC Wrappers

SOPAC

Homepage: http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/
Demo site: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/

Web OPAC Replacements

AquaBrowser

Homepage: http://www.medialab.nl/
Demo site: http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/

Encore

Homepage: http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html
Demo site: http://ukty-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/app

Primo

Homepage: http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/PrimoOverview
Demo site: http://prime2.oit.umn.edu:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=TWINCITIES&reset_config=true

WorldCat Local

Homepage: http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/
Demo site: http://osu.worldcat.org/

Blacklight

Homepage: http://blacklight.rubyforge.org/
Demo site: http://blacklight.betech.virginia.edu/

fac-back-opac

Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/fac-back-opac/
Demo site: http://library.paulsmiths.edu/catalog

Scriblio

Homepage: http://about.scriblio.net/
Demo site: http://library.plymouth.edu/

SOPAC2

Homepage: http://www.blyberg.net/2008/08/16/sopac-20-what-to-expect/
Demo site: http://www.darienlibrary.org/

VuFind

Homepage: http://vufind.org/
Demo site: http://vufind.org/demo/

On the Horizon…

BiblioCommons

Homepage: http://bibliocommons.com/
Demo site: http://www.opl.on.ca/

Extensible Catalog (XC)

Homepage: http://extensiblecatalog.info

Presentation Mechanics

Several people have asked about how the presentation was put together and executed. Everything was done on a Mac using Keynote. The screencasts were recorded with IShowU with the assistance of Mousepose to highlight the mouse cursor and clicks. The presentation was controlled from an HTC Mogul over Bluetooth using the Salling Clicker software.

[Updated 20080329T1925 : Added links.]

[Updated 20080424T1151 : Updated link to the NISO page for the event. Thanks Jodi!]

[Update 20080911T1143 : Added SOPAC2 and Bibliocommons (thanks Josh!) plus XC as well as a link to the screencast/audio mashup of the session.]

[Updated 20090526T1603 : Added link to Oakville Public Library as an example of Bibliocommons. Thanks, Chris!]

The text was modified to update a link from dltj.org/article/web-opac-schemes/ to http:///dltj.org/article/web-opac-schemes/ on December 30th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/next-generation-library-catalogs.html to http://www.alatechsource.org/ltr/next-generation-library-catalogs on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://publications.techsource.ala.org/bookstore/displayItem.pl?itemID=2604 on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://ukty-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/app on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html to http://web.archive.org/web/20080328163000/http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://blacklight.betech.virginia.edu/ to http://www.lib.virginia.edu/digital/resndev/blacklight.html on January 28th, 2011.

NISO Workshop Exploring the Discovery Layer; March 27-28, 2008; Chapel Hill, NC

Peter Murray — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:05:40 +0000

NISO is conducting a workshop later this month called Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards. The workshop is described this way: “Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery — search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery — tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools? What’s coming up and where might standards fit to assist in this arena? The forum will include both a look at the current state of discovery tools and at new visions of what these tools might look like in the next several years.”

I am privileged to be on the agenda for a session on the second day called “Discovery Tools and the OPAC.” A foundational element of the talk is an earlier DLTJ post that categorized ways OPACs can be enhanced. The full abstract is:

A great deal of the discussion surrounding new discovery tools in libraries involve the evolution of the end-user interface to library catalogs. Comparative information seeking services on the general web offer tools such as permalinking, tagging, and content enhancement through comments and reviews. Beginning with a taxonomy of techniques to enhance/supplement/replace the OPAC along with examples of commercial and open source solutions that demonstrate the various tools for user-contributed content.

The workshop starts with a keynote by Richard Ackerman plus presentations by Eric Schnell and Dave Munger, and Dinah Sanders from Innovative Interfaces. Early-bird registration for the workshop ends a week from today.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/discovery08/ to http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/discovery08/ on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/discovery08/agenda.html to http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/discovery08/agenda/ on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://brewing.iii.com/2008/03/05/taking-my-show-and-crutches-on-the-road/ on January 20th, 2011.