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Rent your library system, My OPAC, Unicode emerges, Mapping the future, ILL Update, Other products and news, Quality MARC, STOPpit, BookWhere, Aleph runs on Linux
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Rent your library system |
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Epixtech (previously Ameritech) were the first to grab my attention this year with
their nearly unpronounceable new name, new logo , and some very interesting new developments which
soon emerged as the pattern across the show - establishing the direction no doubt for the next few years. The most influential is likely to
be the re-engineering of Horizon for delivery via the Internet. In this mode, software is downloaded to a web browser from an "Application Service Provider" (ASP)
and the library has no investment in server hardware or responsibility for its maintenance. FM (facilities) Management deals have been quite common, but this is one step further - where
software applications are rented by the month and the internet rather than dedicated lines is the delivery infrastructure. The ASP model will not suit everybody but it does provide a dramatic
example of how much the traditional model of supplying automation services to a library can change. For the library and the vendor the implications are huge. Other vendors around the
show - Endeavor, DRA, TLC and others were all agreed that this way of delivering applications would soon be common. But be warned, it is not just a matter of removing your computer to a
remote "server farm" and carrying on as before - the application has to be re-jigged to run efficiently in this way. Epixtech have done the ground work - their first installation is live - the
other vendors will take a while to catch up. |
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My OPAC |
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EpixTech was also to the fore in another discernable trend this year as library vendors begin to follow the ideas of the internet in the style and organisation of their products. First it was just the Web Based OPAC - now they are looking like "My Yahoo" and using Internet Search Engine software (Innovative) as in addition to their own technologies.
The idea behind the customised/personalised OPAC is to reflect the interests and needs of the user in the way that the OPAC responds.
Nowadays, we see all sorts of services delivered to the user desktop - account information, requests, fines etc.
Now the idea is for the user to complete a profile when they join the library of interests, address etc. Once this is done, specific services are delivered when the user logs on. In the Epixtech OPAC, the weather for the patron's home town is displayed, new books added in the area of patron interest, local libraries are defaulted in to the search options etc. etc. The idea is to provide a wider portal for the user - wider than just a library OPAC and wider than the Web portal that the idea is based on.
My Millennium was a similar personalised OPAC - from Innovative - the “My” prefix has been used to echo My Yahoo and similar personalised web portals. Most vendors were clearly developing their thoughts this way even if products were not yet available. Innovative's offering also allowed the user to download a list of references to a Palm Pilot to check the shelves! In a further move to web technology, Innovative will soon be using the Altavista search engine to search the catalogue in addition to their own search technology - again building on the average new student’s familiarity with common Web tools and ideas.
Gaylord also showed enterprise in the OPAC department with their neat 3 pane approach to show hitlist, bib details and holdings each in a separate pane. Nicely engineered and intuitive to use with again the user being able to customize the database sets that they wish to search.
DRA's offering for the OPAC was the ability to show both separate and merged Z39.50 hitlists - with the merged list being de-duplicated via ISBN. If this doesn't sound that interesting then try a search for a popular title in a multi catalogue environment - it will normally return one hit for every library. TAOS returns one hit with the holdings nicely summarized.
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Unicode emerges |
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Still on the OPAC / cataloguing trail, the clear trend is for Unicode to emerge from the laboratory. With Windows 2000, SQL Server and Oracle now all supporting the standard, many systems can now display CKJ (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) for example in a catalogue record along with Latin script. All cataloguing clients are now being upgraded to deal with the entry of this data and OPACs to deal with the searching and display. VTLS (Virtua), Innovative, Epixtech (Horizon) and Endeavor (Voyager), Ex-Libris (Aleph) all have capable looking products. But there is still a way to go before all the problems are solved. At least we now have the technology and are not hamstrung by inadequate base character sets as we have been for the last 30 years.
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ILL Update |
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ILL is really E-Lending between libraries.
The ISO 10160/61 standards that defined the protocols for ILL are being translated into mature products. At this MW 2000 ALA, most of the main players were showing their wares. Here is the round up of what was on show...
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Mapping the Future |
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For a long time, special material collections in libraries have had to make do with indexing designed for bibliographic materials. Maps and
music, for example have suffered, from unimaginative treatment.
Now - at last - map librarians at least have somethig to be excited about. Endeavor showed me their latest offereing - geospatial searching on their Voyager OPAC. A map librarian will die for this… simply enter a latitude/longitude and the system will return all the maps that cover the area! Filters for types of maps, geological period, scale date etc. mean that the vagaries of titles and the tyranny of geopolitical boundaries are forgotten. Lots of other good looking features for map librarians mean that for once a system name - Voyager - actually has some relevance to the features provided! All this functioinality is driven from the standard 034 and other fields which have long been on map MARC records as purely descriptive items. The vision of making these fields usefully structured and precisely formatted (rather than a simple text note) has paid off handsomely.
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Aleph on Linux and Clusters |
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Ex-Libris has announced that Aleph is now supported on the Linux operating system - this will be the offering for smaller libraries where the combination of an open source operating system running on low cost hardware will allow them the opportunity to join larger consortia running Aleph. Also announced was two clustering options for large consortia with several catalogues requiring to be kept up-to-date (Model A) or several libraries sharing a single catalogue but with separate administrative data (Model B). Advantages of the clustering models include automating catalogue updating, shared patron registration and rules.
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Other Products and News |
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Quality MARC |
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Firstly TMQ (The MARC of Quality) - a very useful set of utilities for any library wanting to maintain quality of MARC records being loaded on to their systems. TMQ products can check all tags for accuracy of indicators, currency, cross dependencies etc. etc. There are even tools for doing global updates to batches of MARC records. Some of TMQ products now run in Windows. Anyone contemplating a system migration, should consider exporting their records, then checking the file for consistency with TMQ and then reloading their new system. Start your new system with a data makeover that will pay huge dividends in retrieval and consistency.
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STOPpit |
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This intriguingly named product is designed to solve the hassles of administering a public Internet area by presenting a replacement for the normal
Windows desktop that cannot be hacked. Only applications registered in the centrally defined profiles can be used.
Timed sessions can be set - users are warned as their limit is approached but cannot exceed it. The user "key" that is assigned to each user cannot be re-entered immediately so machines are "recycled" fairly and in a controlled fashion. Lots of other features make this a simple but very effective PC access admin tool. www.edulib.com
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BookWhere - Web-Clarity |
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Seachange Corporation's have released a web based Z39.50 gateway product WebClarity. Their popular BookWhere product - see review - is the market leader in desktop Z39.50 clients - now Web Clarity enables any library to offer a customised set of Z39.50 catalogues via a web browser by simply setting up central server parameters. The software runs under NT and can be customised according to needs. If your vendor does not have Z39.50 OPAC, then this product will enable you to add the capability without waiting. See the demonstration at www.web-clarity.com
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