Comments on: Library search/discovery apps : intro

By: 20091124 « El blogsitorio

20091124 « El blogsitorio — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:53:21 +0000

[...] Los OPACS del futuro (aunque fuera en Mayo), tendencias en referencia digital y unos ejemplos de [...]

By: LILAC Conference: Day 2: New Library Catalogue Search Interfaces with Added Web 2.0 Capabilities « Cabinet of Curiosities

Thu, 28 May 2009 09:08:11 +0000

[...] of next generation catalogues is a blog post by Chirs Keene from the University of Sussex called Library search / discovery apps: intro, which is very up to date, having been written a couple of days [...]

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:54:45 +0000

Chris, nice overview. See also http://cccu-lib-tech.blogspot.com/2009/04/primo-alternatives.html for a list of tools (by Andy Ekins).
Couple of issues:
- All these discovery tools are not only OPAC replacements, as you rightly remark.
- These tools use harvesting and create large local indexes, even from your own local catalogue (a number of the tools in the DLTJ list are not discovery tools); so basically no distributed metasearch (although they may offer metasearch “addons” like Primo)
- I personally think discovery tools are best implemented in a consortia environment or some other cooperation, not by a single library (not sure how you implemenetd Aquabrowser at Sussex)
- Obviously, the need to create large “local” indexes of everything is an indication of the fact that the administrative backends of our OPAC’s and other Library Systems are not fit for the new digital “cloud” area; we need NOT ONLY sexy Front Ends, but first efficient back ends
- The important thing here is the changing nature of the “collection” concept: no longer local physical collections, but global digital (see my post “Collection 2.0″ ( http://commonplace.net/2009/02/collection-20/ )

By: Peter Murray

Peter Murray — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:50:44 +0000

Great summary, Chris!

Aaron — Summon is sort of like Google in that it is a large index of just about everything, but it differs in the way it gets the information to index. As you noted, Google spiders the web for content. Summon is more like OCLC or Ebsco or ProQuest — information vendors give Serials Solutions a dump of information and SerSol adds it to their Summon index.

By: Aaron Tay

Aaron Tay — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:16:30 +0000

Wow. Very useful for me. I’m doing a part-time phd on quantifying the value of OPACS using stated preference methods. E.g. Value patrons place on enhanced content (covers, tocs), faceted browsing, relevant ranking, tagging etc. Might blog about this sometime.

Your posts are interesting enough with the examples. Also they remind me that while to the user Encore (we use this)/Primo etc are replacing the OPAC, technically they are sitting on top.

Don’t quite understand Summon. It’s not a federated search, does that mean it indexes resources like google crawlers?