Tech, Reference, AND PATRON Views of our new Front-End
1. Tech, Reference, AND
PATRON Views of our
new Front-End
Peter Morris
Systems Librarian
DiMenna-Nyselius Library
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06824
pmorris@fairfield.edu
4. History of the
Project
In the spring of 2007, members of our administration had seen
demonstrations of Encore at ACRL.
In the summer of 2007 we undertook a formal study of faceted search front-
ends.
Our traditional OPAC vendor didn’t have a suitable product at the time we
started our investigation.
We considered the following products: AquaBrowser, WorldCat Local,
Encore, and LibraryThing for Libraries.
Some core functionalities were identified such as:
Did you mean…? functionality.
Tag clouds.
Ability for patrons to tag records.
Seamless integration with the existing OPAC.
5. History of the
Project
By late September we had narrowed the field down to two candidates:
Encore
WorldCat Local
The decision was put to a vote of the Library Council; Encore was the
favorite of the majority of our Library Staff.
Negotiations with III led to our “developer-status”, and eventually our
signing a contract in late October.
The contract specified a 13 week implementation period, at which time a
“Go Live” event/training would take place at the library with III staff.
A full database dump of our bibliographic and holdings records was provided
to III in November.
At the start of December III requested I start working on “Delta Files”.
6. History of the
Project
Delta file procedure in place by January.
Our “go-live” date was missed by a bit…
Staff decided that it would not make sense to launch the new service mid-
semester.
We planned for a summer of testing, and an unveiling to our patrons for the
fall 2008 semester.
7. Files provided
Nightly
Bibliographic update file: unicorn_bib_upd.bfts
Holdings update file: unicorn_holdings_upd.cfts
Bibliographic deletes file: unicorn_bib_del.txt
Item delete file: unicorn_item_del.txt
Holdings delete file: unicorn_holdings_del.txt
There was also the caveat that a good ball-park figure of the number of
records to be transferred each night would be around 5000.
20. Typical Comments
Tech Services Reference
• “I like that it (iLink) has • “I use Encore most of the
more obvious search time, but I do use iLink
options, with Encore I sometimes to perform my
always find myself going to job’s function, such as
‘advanced-search’.” browsing on author’s last
name or searching with
several criteria”
23. You NEED
GOOD DATA
TO FACET
UPON
An analysis of the “sample” set of
records provided by one vendor,
showed that nearly half of the
records didn’t have a single subject
tracing, other than a useless
“electronic resource” tag.
24. Record quality
=520 $a The revolutionary seven dimensions that lead to sustainable business
practice are identified and explored as well as the blind-spots that most
corporate leaders have that prevent them from joining the revolution
In one dump of a vendor’s MARC records there were over 40,000 of these Unicode
conversion problems.
25. And records =LDR 00704nas 22001933u 4500
Like these… =001 XXX000961732
=003 XXXX
=005 20090316193456.0
=006 md
=007 crn
=008 090316uuuuuuuuu||||||ss||||||||||||d
=035 $a(XXXX)ssib000961732
=040 $aXXXXX$cXXXXX$dXXXXX
The X’s in this record are my
The X’s in this record are my =245
00$a{esc}{dollar}1!Be!0XKN7!ON!?u!(!X@{esc}(B$h[el
redactions. The rest of the data is the
redactions. The rest of the data is the ectronic resource].
full extent of the record as provided.
full extent of the record as provided. =260 $a[S.l.] :$b[s.n.]
=500 $aTitle from content provider.
=506 $aLicense restrictions may limit access.
=655 0$aElectronic journals.
=856 40$zView availability and full-text electronic
issues$uhttp://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/?sidX
XXl&SS_jc=JC_000961732&title={esc}{dollar}1!Be!0XK
N7!ON!?u!(!X@{esc}(B
26. • Facility to display holdings
status directly from the
Encore interface (Z39.50
New Features query against Unicorn for
holdings).
We have updated our SirsiDynix
• Ability to allow patron
We have updated our SirsiDynix
system to the latest version of
system to the latest version of tagging of records.
Symphony.
Symphony.
Encore will be updated to version 3.0
Encore will be updated to version 3.0 • Chance to reload all of our
in early June!
in early June! data and “synch”.
• New “Skins” available;
further ability to modify
look and feel.
27. Important Take-
aways
Number of records transferred per night can severely
impact synchronization of the data.
The need for good, standards-based cataloging is increased
by offering a faceted search product.
Patrons love it.
It is simply a discovery tool. It cannot replace the
traditional OPAC nor ILS.
New features may or may not be tenable across cross-
corporate borders.
