eXtensible Catalog
David Lindahl
University of Rochester
XC offers more for discovery than a currently-available next-gen catalog - promises to show some of those functions.
Offers Web interface for circulation info; Web forms for creating next-gen catalog features (like facets); take control of metadata. Open source.
XV project continues through Jan 2010. Completing user research, building software, doing long-term planning.
Funded through Mellon Foundation and partners; hosted at U.Rochester. Tech. partners are using ILSs all over the map - Aleph, Voyager, III, Evergreen, Koha, Scriblio.
Building software - a set of OS tools for libraries; works alongside existing systems; provides increased discovery; some parts already downloadable.
User research:
Want to address not-yet-identified user needs
Studied 68 representative libraries - users studied were heavy library users, including faculty and researchers. Operating question - "What if you had a magic wand?" - all interviews videoed and team-analyzed to identify those elusive needs.
Building software:
Most ILSs are missing discovery tools for metadata schemes other than MARC - David thinks we need to admit out loud that we use many metadata schemes of differing quality, origin, usefulness, etc. So built the software this way:
-Connectivity - create open standards interfaces to ILSs
-Metadata tools - tools for libraries to deal with all sorts of metadata schema
-User interface - this is last, b/c it's not the only thing that libraries need
Metadata management - aggregation, FRBRization, improving other discovery interfaces
Uses standards to communicate with proprietary systems, new tools; turns all that into native Web content and user-generated metadata
Software overview (building 8 things):
User interface - Drupal toolkit; LMS toolkit (creates a discovery interface to implant into Drupal, Blackboard, etc)
Metadata Tools - Metadata services toolkit for record cleanup, FRBRization, authority control, etc
Connectivity - OAI toolkit (for metadata), NCIP toolkit (specifically for Circulation modules of ILS; also working on functionality w/ ILLiad) - allows XC to talk to any system that speaks OAI or NCIP (most Ex Libris products speak OAI). OAI toolkit is currently available for download; Voyager drivers are available now. The "glue" that will hold these toolkits to the ILS is currently in development.
David has a nice graphic slide that displays the way these toolkits stack up and deliver info to the discovery interface - much better than any written description that I can do. See it here (download the presentation).
Why use OAI-PMH?
-works with existing sources, including ILSs and repositories
-OAI-PMH works with all metadata schema
-theirs is built from scratch, so no problems with performance issues
Intent of XC is that it can be installed and configured by a sysadmin without writing any programming code, although will need to write or customize scripts. NCIP connectivity needs java, but developers are writing this code for the project.
Another nice diagram of how data gets from ILS to OAI toolkit - worth a thousand typed words, easily. See it here (download the presentation)
Metadata Services Toolkit: a new type of cataloging tool - metadata goes in and an automated process knows what to do with it to apply services.
Services are also configurable and new services can be created by the user community. This user interface is for staff.
What can it do?
Add repositories, schedule harvests, orchestrate services, browse records, makes improved metadata available w/OAI-PMH.
Demo of Metadata Services toolkit, including faceted browsing of metadata, e.g.: browse on schema, provider, error, warnings - pretty cool feature.
User Interface (available end of '09 or beginning of '10)
Search features (Drupal toolkit) will have...
Out of the box search interface
Faceted browsing results
Include traditional, digital, and website resources
FRBRization to group related resources by "work"
Easy and robust search customization
Since is part of Drupal, serves as a platform for the library Web site:
-Integrate discovery with library Web site
-Capture and display user-generated metadata (and can share user-generated stuff with other institutions' XC toolkits
Brilliant - participating in Drupal the way any Drupal developer would. Imagine, libraries participating as developers in an existing, successful OS project rather than re-doing the whole thing from scratch.
LMS Toolkit:
Can't build drivers to tie this in to all Learning Management Toolkits (although are building them for Blackboard), but designing it so you can.
What does it do?
Has user interfaces for librarians and instructors to associate a resource with a course or range of courses, and to migrate associations from semester to semester. Eventually, can follow a trail of which library resources are associated with what courses. Will also display library resources within the LMS.
Idea is that this is next-gen subject guide, so can move beyond the static subject guide, which doesn't work very well for current undergrads.
Open source code is live on the XC site - what the developers write is available at the end of the day. The XC community will be supported by the eXtensible Catalog Organization, a not-for-profit under the umbrella of U.Rochester. Hoping for libraries to join at many levels to support software development - otherwise, OS doesn't work.
This really exciting stuff, but I worry about sustainability. They currently have seven fulltime developers working on XC, and when the grant money is gone, who will fill that void?
Posted by: DaleA | May 08, 2009 at 09:59 AM