In Practice

By Meredith Farkas
American Libraries Columnist

Distance learning librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont
librarysuccess@gmail.com

March 2008

The term Web 2.0 was on the lips—and in the press releases—of many vendors in Philadelphia. For the past few years, librarians have been lobbying for more interoperability, openness, web-scale presence, and tools that allow patrons to add content to library systems. Finally, we’re starting to see results.

If the discussion at RMG’s 18th Annual Presidents’ Seminar could be summed up in one word, it would be “open.” While most of the major ILS vendor executives discussed the differences between being a family-owned business and part of a private equity group, the big topics centered around openness: open standards, open source, and open APIs (application programing interface).

Open standards lead to greater software interoperability, allowing libraries to pick and choose the components they want from each vendor. Standards compliance also helps systems extract data from diverse content providers, leading to products like Serials Solutions’ 360 Counter and Innovative Interfaces’ ERM, which pull usage data from each electronic content provider and export the aggregated data in a form librarians can use.

On the RMG panel, Vinod Chakra of VTLS argued that good software fosters partnership and that the lines between users and creators should be blurry. This blurring of lines is often achieved through APIs. An interface that allows two programs to interact, an API lets users build additional functionality onto a system or use functionality from one system in another. This gives librarians with programming skills the ability to build applications onto the ILS and the vendors can then capitalize on the talent and initiative of their customers by making those new applications available to their entire customer base. A number of ILS vendors already make their APIs available to libraries. At Midwinter, OCLC launched the WorldCat Grid Developer’s Network to make their web services available to library developers and to support a community of developers outside of OCLC.

There was no avoiding the topic of open source this year, and not just because of its growing presence in the exhibit hall. LibLime’s huge ceiling-high sign could hardly be missed, nor could the news that 15 academic libraries in New York’s WALDO (Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization) Consortium had chosen LibLime’s Koha ZOOM ILS. WALDO has also commissioned LibLime to make Koha better meet the needs of academic libraries.

The other major open source ILS on the block, Evergreen, has also hooked some big fish, with Ontario’s Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, McMaster University in Hamilton, and the University of Windsor, as well as the Michigan Library Consortium and Indiana State Library, all working towards implementation. The three Canadian libraries are working on an acquisitions module that will benefit everyone using Evergreen.

Also difficult to miss were the lime-green shirts of the VuFind developers at the PALINET booth. VuFind, developed at Villanova (Pa.) University, is an open source discovery platform that can go on top of an already existing ILS. It includes faceted browsing, user tagging and commenting, and several other exciting features. PALINET has teamed up with VuFind to market the software and support member libraries in implementation.

In other open source news, CARE Affiliates has partnered with WebFeat and Index Data, using their proprietary and open source translators that allow communication with databases for federated search, to create Open Translators. This hosted solution allows libraries to choose any federated search interface (or build their own) and benefit from the translators developed by WebFeat and Index Data.

Patrons as providers

In 2006, the Pew Internet and American Life project found that 35% of online adults and 57% of teens were adding content to the Web. The benefits of users adding content to your system include increased (if not improved) data and a population that is engaged with your system. Features that allow patrons to be participants are so in demand that several libraries have built the functionality into their catalog themselves. OCLC’s WorldCat Local was the first library product to allow users to add reviews and other information to the catalog, but suddenly we’re seeing similar features in a number of vendor offerings.

Auto-Graphics’ web-based ILS, AGent Verso, has incorporated a number of Web 2.0 tools, including RSS feeds and user tagging. Also of note is its geolocation IP authentication technology, which lets users authenticate into library resources without having a library card. Since employing this technology instead of requiring a library barcode, New Jersery’s statewide virtual reference service has increased usage by 25%.

Ex Libris’s contribution to the discovery platform market, Primo, allows users to rate, review, and assign tags to materials in the catalog. In addition to faceted search results and spelling suggestions, Primo offers a single interface for searching all of the library’s print and electronic materials, including locally digitized resources and online databases.

Innovative Interfaces recently released its discovery platform, Encore. Instead of user tagging, Encore displays a weighted tag cloud of related LC subject headings along with the search results. The developers plan to incorporate user tagging into the second version of their discovery tool, as well as better features for material delivery. Both Primo and Encore can work atop a different vendor’s ILS.

Two new products that incorporate user-generated content are TLC’s Indigo and Medialab’s My Discoveries. I got a peek at the still-in-production Indigo and was impressed with its adoption of long-sought Web 2.0 features: faceted browsing, visual browsing of book jackets by genre, user tagging and reviews, the ability to create booklists, and the ability for libraries to pull in timely RSS content from the Web. My Discoveries is a social software add-on for the popular AquaBrowser, which lets patrons tag, rate, and review items in the catalog. Unlike any of the other systems, user-generated content from each library is stored in a central repository of all libraries using the product. Since the value of any social technology is in the number of users adding content, pulling from a central repository adds value to every library’s catalog. In addition, libraries can choose to pre-populate their catalog with LibraryThing tags.

Some content providers are also jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Last fall, Elsevier released 2Collab, its own social bookmarking tool. 2Collab users can easily bookmark and tag materials from Elsevier’s online collections as well as material from the Web. Readex, known for its online historical collections, announced the release of Crossroads, a social networking tool that allows scholars and students to connect online around Readex’s collections (disclosure: I am a member of its advisory board). Users can create profiles in Crossroads and can tag, annotate, and create custom collections of historical material. This can be done privately, as part of a project group, or publicly.

Follow the users

Students today have no trouble finding Facebook or Wikipedia, but ask them to find their library’s website and you may discover that many have never used it. A growing focus of library web design has been on making library resources more portable so they can be embedded into the systems our users do frequent.

OCLC recently announced that the upcoming release of its virtual reference system, QuestionPoint, is going to include a chat widget that can be embedded on any web page. This will allow librarians to post chat widgets in places users frequently have problems, such as the library catalog, and for patrons to get help at their point of need. ProQuest has developed a widget generator that gives librarians the ability to embed a search box on any web page, including online courseware. Librarians can enter their proxy prefix, specific search parameters, and can visually customize the widget. There are also Facebook applications that allow users to embed on their own profile search boxes for WorldCat and JSTOR.

New search, new
content, new markets

Several database user interfaces have just received extreme makeovers. EBSCO has released its new Visual Search tool, which allows users to interact with subject areas and materials through a highly interactive drag-and-drop interface. The firm also offered a preview of the new basic interface for EBSCO databases, scheduled to be rolled out this summer. Ovid recently released its streamlined new search and discovery platform OvidSP, which features natural-language search, faceted browsing, and annotation of search results.

Some vendors are looking beyond books and journal articles to develop strong collections of multimedia materials. ProQuest announced an agreement to distribute Critical Mention, which provides up-to-date and indexed TV and radio news content. It is also adding multimedia content to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. LexisNexis previewed its new Statistical DataSets, whose interface makes it easy to create customized views of data and do sophisticated analysis.

Ebrary is looking beyond publishers’ e-books by making its software available by license so libraries can host locally digitized content on the platform. Ex Libris is working with the National Library of New Zealand to develop a flexible, standards-based Digital Preservation System for national and cultural institutions, making Ex Libris a trailblazer in this largely untapped market.

For the first time in a few years, acquisitions didn’t dominate the news at ALA Exhibits, with one exception: OCLC’s purchase of EZProxy. Used in over 2,400 institutions, EZProxy is one of the major software products for authenticating remote users. This acquisition puts the muscle of OCLC behind EZProxy’s development, which had been single-handedly run since 1999 by its founder.