Biblibre has announced a demo of their SOPAC/Koha installation on their blog. The post was in French, so I’ll summarize for you.
You can access their very awesome demo online at: http://demo.sopac.biblibre.com/. It is important to remember this is just a test install for us to test and for them to play with - so if you have comments as you poke around, be sure to contact them and let them know what you learned.
John Blyberg has done it again! On September 1 Darien Library went live with their new website and OPAC.
SOPAC 2.0 (“Social OPAC”) focuses on community for both users and library software developers. The roughly 20,000 residents of Darien will be the first to benefit from and contribute content to the new library catalog, but the software is built to tap into a much larger community of users, incorporating shared aggregate user data sets, similar to products like LibraryThing for Libraries and BiblioCommons. As Blyberg has said, a larger community is necessary for a critical mass of content for robust search and discovery.
Very very cool and well worth looking at. Read more of Josh Hadro’s article about SOPAC 2.0.
Somehow I missed this announcement. Villanova has rolled out their new OPAC using VuFind.
I know it’s been a while since Code4Lib, but I wanted you all to see the videos that go with my summaries. I wrote about Andrew Nagy’s presentation when I came back from Code4Lib, but now you can see the presentation your self:
Technorati Tags: vufind, code4lib, code4lib2008, code4libcon2008
In Andrew Nagy’s presentation From Idea to Open Source, he took us through the process of creating VuFind, an open-source OPAC replacement/Library portal.
At Villanova, they wanted to develop a portal for library patrons that would let people search the catalog, the article databases and digital library all in one - and keep it separate from the ILS. The goal was one single interface for all library resources in order to minimize the learning curve associated with having many different interfaces.
After doing some asking around, they quickly found that many other academic libraries were having the same problem - so the question became - why don’t we do it together? Why not make this an open-source project so that others can participate and benefit from the work of others?
The Goal
At Villanova, they wanted to build a system that would work with any ILS (including Koha & Evergreen - which Andrew called “our open source cousins”) and needs to work on a variety of platforms (Linux, Windows, etc).
The goal was not to replace the ILS, keep the ILS to do what it does best - but change the web app our patrons use so that it better meets their needs and expectations. VuFind uses the ILS to pull live holdings data from and either harvest bib data (if the ILS doesn’t provide direct database access) or query existing index (mostly used on the open-source ILSes which provide a way to let you in to search directly).
By having this top layer in addition to your ILS, you can easily change ILSes in the future without disrupting your patrons or changing the way they’re used to working. All this, just by separating the OPAC from the ILS.
Making it Open Source
The next step is to take this open source and share it - Villanova is not the marketplace to sell/support software. Andrew made a call to the audience to help build a collaborative community around VuFind so that this project can take off and be successful. Since other institutions are interested in it it would be a shame for Villanova to keep it to themselves - this is why open source is the next logical stop for the project.
In order to do this decisions have to be made, the right tools need to chosen. Some options were Sourceforge and Google Code. Right now, the VuFind team chose Sourceforge - they don’t find that it has all of the tools they need, but it was a good first step in making the project shareable.
The future vision includes having a local SVN or CVS and using a tool like JIRA, TRAC, Bugzilla, etc. These options lead to true freedom, but require a hosting institution.
Positives of Open-sourcing
Negatives of Open-sourcing
Where VuFind is now
Most importantly, we need easy ways to install the software. Everyone knows about the famous Wordpress 1 minute install - this should be the goal. The product requires easy install and integration, strong user interface and strong functionality before it will be widely adopted (I’d argue that the interface is pretty strong already - just a few more tweaks and it’s there).
When open-sourcing a project you need a roadmap for organization, to keep the process agile and to communicate with the community so they know what you’re doing from time to time. The start to this is the VuFind site and Sourceforge, but as Andrew said, not everything needed can be found in Sourceforge.
Conclusions
I’ve seen Andrew talk a few times about VuFind and I think this was the best of all of the talks I saw. It showed me how I can help, it showed me that there is a plan and a pretty mapped out one for VuFind. I see this as a viable option for librarians looking for a way to to integrate searching of all of their collections in one easy to use, clean, interface.
Technorati Tags: vufind, code4lib, code4lib2008, code4libcon2008
Last week, I had the privilege of attending Lincoln Trails Symposium on the The Future of the Integrated Library System. One of the many highlights of the conference for me was Karen Schneider’s talk on the state of the OPAC in late 2007. As most of you probably know, Karen Schneider — author of the blog “Free Range Librarian” — has been leading the charge to a more user-centric OPAC for several years now. So, I confess to more than a twinge of pride when Karen described Koha as a robust, enterprise ILS (For more on Karen’s views on Koha, Evergreen, and open-source software check out her recent TechSource article on Enterprise Open Source.)
During her presentation, Karen got specific about her vision for the Next Generation OPAC, offering up a fantastic checklist for ILS companies to consider. Of course, I immediately began making a mental survey of how Koha ZOOM stacked up, and decided that list was quite a bit more useful outside of my own head. So, here it goes…
Karen notes that usability studies show that mis-spelled words cause up to 10% of user failure (The example Karen gave was that a search on “cheesee” won’t retrieve ‘cheese’ related items in many ILS systems).
Firing up my browser, I point it at my local library OPAC here in Athens, Ohio (which runs Koha, of course). Koha ZOOM currently uses auto-correction without feedback, and as I moved from ‘macey gray’ to ‘loyd alexander’ to ‘massachussetts’, I have to say ZOOM handles this really well, though it would be nice to give the user some feedback when terms are auto corrected.
ZOOM passes the ‘cheesee’ test. It also passes the “Salmon Rushdie” test — one of my all -time favorite authors whose spelling proximity to the fish often relegate him to OPAC obscurity in less competent ILSs. Mispelling Salman (”salmon rushdie”) in the Athens County’s OPAC retrieves all 13 books written by the author in the county’s collection–the same number retrieved by a search on the correct spelling (”salman rushdie”).
Compare this to TLC Aquabrowser’s handling of the search query “salmon rushdie” which retrieves only 2 of the rushdie books in the Queen’s Library catalog. http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/ (The correct spelling: “salman rushdie” retrieves 103 results) No offense to the Queen’s Library who have a website design that makes me drool every time I happen upon it!
Auto-correction with feedback (as recommended by Karen Schneider) is definitely compelling.
Relevance ranking is perhaps what Koha ZOOM does best. My favorite search to illustrate ZOOM’s stellar relevance ranking is the term ‘it’. As a single word title and stopword at that, I’ve encountered many an ‘enterprise ILS’ that couldn’t find the obvious: “It” by Stephen King.
Note: ZOOM queries on other stopwords like “No” and “The” works too. There is a CD collection of Children’s rock music entitled ‘No!’ and a CD ‘The’ by Macy Gray. Both CDs come up first, just as they oughta.
One reason ZOOM’s relevance ranking is so dead on is that LibLime worked closely with Athens County public librarians to make sure ‘relevance’ worked exactly as they expected. They made a list of all their tough searches, and LibLime made sure ZOOM’s relevance ranking lived up to those expectations.
Check. ZOOM does it and most LibLime clients have chosen for their OPAC to display availability on the results page. You can even limit by availability, and ZOOM’s availability index is updated in real time as circulation happens, so it’s always up to date–no periodic batch process to wait for.
The short answer: not yet. This is something I love about Netflix and Karen is right that this is where ILSs need to head. Carl Grant of CARE Affiliates noted in his presentation that one of the issues holding ILS companies back from offering personalized recommendations is that libraries are often reluctant to track ‘borrower history’ for fear of violating privacy issues. He is also correct in pointing out that tracking such history is exactly how commercial sites like Amazon.com manages to offer such relevant recommendations. He goes on to argue that if Amazon.com is any indication of where users fall in the privacy/web 2.0 debate, it seems that the decision has already been made. (i.e., Users prefer good recommendations over privacy).
Based on my personal experience working in a public library for over 7 years, I have had ALOT more users get mad at the library for NOT tracking borrower history because they want to know if they’ve already read a book, or what that book was that they checked out last month with the blue cover 
An easy compromise: let users ‘opt in’ or ‘opt out’ to borrower history by logging into their account online. Since Koha users already decide whether to track borrower history based on the library’s policy on privacy (Koha supports both options), letting opt-in/opt-out on a individual user basis should be on the development horizon.
ZOOM’s got it. I especially love ZOOM’s ’series’ facet which allows users to quickly find out what ’series’ are associated with a prolific writer like Nora Roberts, and then locate all the books in that series with one click. (I myself am not looking for Nora Roberts books but have helped scores of patrons who were.)
Koha ZOOM is the first ILS OPAC to offer editions through xISBN apart from OCLC’s Worldcat. Editions support isn’t at the top of every users’ list, but it is very useful for students who frequently need a specific edition of a classic like “Hamlet”. Our developers did a blog post on the Editions feature recently.
This is a fantastic idea. ZOOM doesn’t have this (yet), but does offer “book bag” and “virtual shelves” features for creating lists, emailing them and sharing them with others.
ZOOM has integrated reviews/ratings, as well as enhanced content (jacket covers, extra metadata, etc.). Many libraries still don’t know that there is a free alternative to the significant money they are paying for enhanced content. Meanwhile, Amazon.com offers free book images, reviews and ratings through their web services program, in exchange for a single link back to Amazon’s website. We actually did a blog post on this a while back as well.
Natively a web application, deep linking has been part of Koha from day 1. There are persistent links for all the pages on ZOOM’s OPAC, and even some shortcuts like isbn/ and bib/.
In summary: Koha stacks up pretty well. It’s a testament to the open-source model; the users really DO know what they’re doing, and when they can steer development, you end up with software that is on the cutting-edge in terms of both features and functionality. Of course, we’re not done yet