Next Generation Library Interfaces - Marshall Breeding

(This was a very fast paced presentation during lunch in the exhibitor hall)

Common tools for access to local collections:

Library OPAC (ILS module)

Links to publishers,

Cross linking via openurl

Journal finding aids (link resolver)

Metasearch engines

All loosely coupled from the end user’s point of view, and all individually updated throughout the organization.

There is change underway towards providing access to users

There is widespread dissatisfaction with most of the current opacs, and movement among libraries to break out of the current mold and offer new interfaces better suited to user expectations; also decoupling of the front-end interface from the back end library automation system.

What we are seeing now is a broad rethinking of what a library catalog is and what a library web site ought to be:  a more comprehensive information discovery environment, better information delivery tool, more powerful search capabilities and a more elegant presentation. 

The next generation library catalog interface will be more comprehensive, more like open archives initiative model: not shallow searching, but searching within content.  It will harvest the metadata and index it and point back to the original source.

Problems of scale have diminished: hardware and software tends to scale infinitely.

Web 2.0 stuff has to be part of it.  It has to have community aspect - more social and collaborative, web tools and technology that foster collaboration. 

Supporting technologies for 2.0: web services, xml api’s

It is no longer enough to provide a catalog limited to print resources; digital resources cannot be an afterthought.

Forcing different interfaces on a user is becoming less tenable.

Millennial generation library users are well acclimated to the web and how it works in the real world, and they like it.  They are used to relevancy ranking: the good stuff should be listed first; users don’t tend to delve deep into a result list.

Systems have to be fast and responsive; there is a low tolerance for slow systems.  You also need visual information, like book jacket images, rating scores, etc.

Faceted browsing: drill down vs searching boolean or advanced.  They want to be able to type in a broad search then drill down and get into narrower results.  Consider what works in the ecommerce arena.

Include navigational bread crumbs (a way to get back out of where they are), ratings, and rankings.

LCSH vs FAST (faceted approach to subject terminology):  LCSH may not be the best approach any more.

Full MARC vs. Dublin core or mods:  more lightweight formats (mods) work better with multimedia

Common characteristics of next generation catalogs:

Decoupled interface, mass export of catalog data, alternative search engines, alternative interfaces.

Endeca guided navigation from ncsu.edu (also being used by Florida Center for Library Automation)

Aquabrowser library (being used in the queens borough public library (also being used by smaller libraries) has  been around for a while already.  It mostly provides a replacement for the library catalog.

Exlibris Primo is expanding their scope.

Encore from Innovative Interfaces is similar to Primo; provides ever more expanded results. 

It is not enough to search records about an item: today the search has to search full text.

VUFind from Villanova is based on the Apache Solr search toolkit www.vufind.org/demo, developed by a university.

Anyone building a next gen system today would have to have these features in their product.  OCLC worldcat local is an example of next generation - searches worldwide, but puts local results at the top.

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