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Seeking Details About Mystery Discovery Layer Company
There is a message floating around the net with a link to a survey about "a completely new online resource discovery service." There is no identifying information information on the survey; obviously the entity that commissioned it wants to remain private. I, however, want to know who this organization is …
Posted on· 2 minutes reading time -
Video Tour of OPAC Discovery Layer Tools
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 …
Posted on· 1 minutes reading time -
A Catalog for the "Next Generation" or the Current Generation?
Are we building the "next generation" catalog for us (librarians) or our users? As a read a report from the Next Generation Summit Search Interface Working Group of the Orbis/Cascade Alliance, I have to wonder. Portions of this report are dated ((Although the report itself does not contain a …
Posted on· 4 minutes reading time -
Links to OPAC Enhancements, Wrappers, and Replacements
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 …
Posted on· 4 minutes reading time -
NISO Workshop Exploring the Discovery Layer; March 27-28, 2008; Chapel Hill, NC
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 …
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Schemes to Add Functionality to the Web OPAC
Schemes to add functionality to the web OPAC fall into four categories: web OPAC enhancements, web OPAC wrappers, web OPAC replacements, and integrated library system replacements. I'm outlining these four techniques in a report I'm editing for an OhioLINK strategic task force and a bit of a reality check on …
Posted on· 4 minutes reading time -
Solr-ized MARC Record Catalog
Rob Casson of Miami University announced this weekend the beta availability of their video catalog. In a subsequent posting, Rob describes the user interface elements. Rob and the crew at Miami are seeking feedback on the interface, so if you have some be sure to offer it to them.
A …
Posted on· 2 minutes reading time -
Services in a Service Oriented Architecture
This post is the second in a series about the application of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) system design pattern to library services. The first post in this series focused on defining "Service Oriented Architecture" using the analogy of a transportation network. This post goes into some detail about what …
Posted on· 10 minutes reading time -
A Known Citation Discovery Tool in a Library2.0 World
When it comes to seeking a full-text copy of that known-item citation, are our users asking "what have you done for me lately?" OpenURL has taken us pretty far when one starts in an online environment -- a link that sends the citation elements to our favorite link resolver -- but it …
Posted on· 4 minutes reading time -
Just In Time Acquisitions versus Just In Case Acquisitions
What of a service existed where the patrons selected an item they needed out of our library catalog and that item was delivered to the patron even when the library did not yet own the item? Would that be useful? With the growth of online bookstores, our users do have …
Posted on· 7 minutes reading time -
It's All About User Services: A Summary and Commentary on the LITA Top Technology Trends meeting
What follows is a summary and commentary on the LITA Top Technology Trends meeting at ALA annual conference in New Orleans on 25-Jun-2006. What I've tried to do is collate comments from the panel members and add my own commentary (marked off as such from the rest of the summary …
Posted on· 8 minutes reading time -
"Is the Writing On The Wall?" — Take 2
Walt Crawford chided me — rightly so — for yesterday's Is the Writing on the Wall for the Integrated Library System? post. My choice of language was, admittedly, sloppy. I was fired up last night...distracted, if you will, by what was happening at a really good conference. Please allow me the …
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Is the Writing on the Wall for the Integrated Library System?
While in UNC-CH for JCDL I've had occasion to rant with/at some people about the state of the integrated library system marketplace — including, of course, how we got into the spot we're in and how we might get out of it (and those people were kind enough to engage …
Posted on· 6 minutes reading time