visited glendale yesterday afternoon for the monthly DS open meeting......didn't think up anything worth blogging about.
today comes a response to an article "beyond opac 2.0: library catalog as versatile discovery platform" which comes from the new code4lib journal. some things i found interesting:
1. the catalog is used in two ways a) "i know what i want" (or referred to as "known item" by the authors) and b) let me explore or browse (exploratory). Depending on your mode of shopping determines how best the catalog works for you/not. Their argument is "why should the discovery of library collections be limited to a single catalog application?" They cite Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC) who considers "lifting out of the catalog discovery experience."
the authors are the architects of the Endeca catalog which is employed at the North Carolina State University library system.
when i went to check out the ncsu catalog, they have an interesting presentation. On their search page you can choose either the a) or b) method mentioned above. They give you advanced searching for those really in the know or you can hit the browse button if you want to search titles by subject (LC subjects, mind you) or browse new titles (by last week, last month or within the last 3 months).
they've also done some thinking about offering their catalog for mobile devices....and have rendered the catalog search via your cell phone to just keyword, title, author or ISBN.
i'm excited about reading more of these next-generation catalog articles. they're pursuing different ideas and work arounds. what have you seen that's nifty and new in the catalog world?
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