Innovative Online Catalogs

Innovative Online Catalogs: 

Librarians love to search but patrons love to find.

Old style catalog vs New Style catalog

Major categories of innovation in online catalogs (Breeding):

• New interfaces are fresh, attractive, compelling 
• Good relevance ranking
• Faceted navigation and search result clustering
• Clear breadcrumb trail
• Speed of results

 Examples:

Visual displays: Aquabrowser example at Queens Library  (includes a word cloud of resources from all over the catalog (not just books), allows a “Did you mean?” function, refine menu on the right allows you to refine by year, format, etc. Just announced a new MY Discoveries social networking option for customers to create their own reviews and tags, and share them with others.

Endeca - At PPL relevancy ranking, speed of results, tabs allow variable drop down menus for searching, BISAC headings instead of LOC, faceted navigation, results clustering, program and event information included in search, spelling coorections, Did you mean?’ option,  RSS feeds of search results, events, card information, and press releases., customizable library card account with “My Bookshelf” features, 3rd party content Amazon, Netflix, Billboard, Rotten Tomatoes, Novelist. Upcoming enhancements: Online fee payment, FRBR, NetFlix style holds queue, family linked library cards, real time card registration, text messaging of account information (for example holds notification), implement QuestionPoint for virtual reference service, book sales, online meeting room reservations and program registrations, social networking shared booklists, staff picks, Rotten Tomatoes mashups,

New interfaces – not from big ILS companies (Evergreen)

Live feed displaying just checked in items

Option of buying books through the opac

User tagging, reviews, ratings,

AJAX  a way to display more information without redrawing the entire webpage

3rd Party mashups: Library elf, Librarything, Amazon

Feeds from Netflix, Rotten tomatoes

 Website innovations that are not strictly online catalog features:

• Library 2.0 and Social networking technologies: Blogs, podcasts, wikis, shared reader’s lists
• virtual reference questions and answers ready to go
• Meeting room reservations online
• Card Catalog Marginalia
• Historic Photo archive
• Dewey-less library (Maricopa’s Perry Branch)

 Slow Library Movement: a reaction to Library 2.0 evangelists

• Let’s focus on realistic, local solutions and build community first.
• Let’s forget about Web 2.0 for a second, understand our customers needs and then apply or give access to resources that help them satisfy those needs.
• Let’s play.
• Let’s shun pressure to “keep up” with Ann Arbor (sorry John Blyberg), Hennepin County (sorry Glenn Peterson via Tame the Web) and etc. and apply our own strengths to come up with our own creative ideas.
• Let’s focus on what we can do right now to make the community a better place.
• Let’s notice the beauty of things right before our eyes, and let supporting that be our Return on Investment.