Marshall Breeding came to Barcelona and during his visit he gave a seminar entitled Global Business and Technology Trends in Library Automation. The seminar was organised by the CBUC, Catalan University Library Association, and held on 2 April. It was open to all of the association’s members, their collaborators and companies from the sector.
Francesc and I were able to attend and talk to Mr Breeding about which trends are going to define the future of library services in academic libraries.
Of the questions that came up, one of the most important ones was the current transition from integrated library systems to library services platforms – a term coined by Breeding to define the evolution of current systems that are still designed to manage collections on paper.
Library services platforms are designed instead for content management, regardless of the format, thus integrating into one single platform the dispersed contents on a range of platforms, as is currently the case at libraries: ILS + Electronic Resource Management + OpenURL Link Resolver + Digital Collections Management platform + Institutional Repository + Discovery-layer services for broader access to library collections + …
Architecture model proposed by Breeding
One of the main features of these platforms is the flexibility and ability to manage different kinds of library materials, multiple metadata formats and the corresponding workflows.
Openness has been defined as the backbone to the library’s technology strategies.
One of the issues stressed by Breeding was the need for these new platforms to move away from the ‘black box’ paradigm and become open systems. Openness has been defined as the backbone to the library’s technology strategies. Libraries need to do more things with their data and they have to be able to process these data easily. The need for open APIs and interoperability is key in these systems.
The future of these systems depends on easier access to the data held in the their knowledge bases, which are their greatest asset; and in the flexibility to generate and process the growing diversity of data and metadata models.
Encore is a product from Innovative Interfaces. In their words: “Through a single search box, Encore connects users to all the trusted resources the library collects or selects” (Encore website).
But we all know that this concept is confusing. Most technologies do not let you discover all of the library’s resources. Looking a bit more closely, we see that, in fact, Encore is not just one product. Encore is a set of products, where each product is a solution to a specific part of the problem. Thus, one product is never enough, and all the products together can give you a solution for most of your needs. This kind of solution could meet 90% of your needs, if you are lucky.
Encore Discovery is a layer to enrich your OPAC – a discovery layer working on top of the ILS (Integrated Library System). That means you must buy another ILS soon…
Encore Synergy provides the user with the catalogue content and the electronic resources content.
Then you can also buy Encore Harvesting Services, Research Pro, Pathfinder Pro, etc.
As a discovery tool, Encore has a modern and usable interface. Here are the most common features of the discovery tools, and some that are not so common:
Options to refine your search; the possibility to sort results criteria (although only three); indicator of full text availability; navigation and discovery tools, including filter by facets (you can select several at once) and cloud tags; tools to create community, such as adding tags and rankings; sharing tools, including RefWorks or email; and services with social intelligence, such as ‘people looking for this may be interested in these recent additions’.
You can take a look to Encore Synergy:
And Encore Discovery:
- Collective Catalogue of Catalonia universities
- Syracuse University
- Catalogue of the Public Libraries of Catalonia
‘Making is the most powerful way that we solve problems, express ideas and shape our world. What and how we make defines who we are, and communicates who we want to be.’
http://www.daltonmghetti.com/
and continues: ‘For many people, making is critical for survival. For others, it is a chosen vocation: a way of thinking, inventing and innovating.’
And that’s true for us. ‘Thinking, inventing and innovating‘ to solve problems. ‘Thinking, inventing and innovating‘ to manage our library collection: knowing what we have and what subjects we cover. ‘Thinking, inventing and innovating‘, using the new technologies that we are learning and reusing all old database systems we own to manage our resources (OPAC and the eResouces we put on the classrooms) and their subject coverage.
Several months ago we started a new Lab project: our main goal? to try to visualize and connect all the data we have about our collection and the virtual classrooms. Now we are proud to announce that we have something to show! a Collection Data Analysis Tool.
An interface to provide access to data and indicators that allow analysis and management of the collection in relation to coverage, from the different dimensions and perspectives arising from the policies of the Library.
Now you can see a brief of the project on our Library Lab Web page... and in a few weeks we will start to publish a little bit more… we are starting a user tests for improvements and a final touch!
‘And for some it [-the power of making-] is simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say ‘I made that’. The power of making is that it fulfils each of these human needs and desires.’
The UOC Library has offered its services to the UOC community in Catalan since 1995, in Spanish since 2000 and in English since 2009.
In order to provide services to the community in different languages, the Library not only has to translate the website, but also adapt the services and some of the content offered.
Focusing on the catalogue, the library wanted to translate the bibliographical information of the catalogue records so as to provide users with more information.
However, the multilingual OPACs that offer different language interfaces have only translated the field names; for example, ‘subject’ in English and ‘tema’ in Spanish.
The UOC Library wanted to go a step further. It wanted to translate the subjects and notes and build different interfaces
depending on the language chosen, displaying only the corresponding information in each language.
We carried out research to find other catalogues that had web interfaces in different languages but could not find many. The few we found only translated the web interface. Some offered information in different languages but mixed them together, so when searching for a book, users would see the interface in one language and the subjects in another.
The solution that we present on LibLabs shows how the Library incorporates the translations in Millennium ILS, while respecting, as far as possible, the cataloguing standard and taking advantage of Millennium OPAC (WebPACPro).
We would encourage you to look at our catalogue in the different languages (Catalan, Spanish and English), and if you want technical information on how we built it, to read our OPAC Multilingual Solution on LibLabs.
If you know of any multilingual OPAC, add a comment!
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