Libraries on nostuff.org archive | Chris Keene

Library Catalogues need to cater for light-weight discovery clients

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:11:26 +0000

Way back I wrote a piece about the changing model for library catalogues, you can see it here. The main premise was that trying to maintain records in a Library Management System (LMS/ILS) for all the items you want your users to discover is no longer feasible. This is especially true in this here digital age, trying to maintain records for all the e-journals a University has access to is an almost impossible task, and LMS were not designed for thousands of MARC records to be dropped and then re-imported (i.e. sync’d) with another source. And what about all the free stuff, is an e-book not worth being discovered by users because it is free?

Summon @ Huddersfield

Tue, 25 May 2010 21:38:05 +0000

I attended an event at Huddersfield looking at their and Northumberland’s experience of Summon. http://library.hud.ac.uk/blogs/summon4hn/?p=22 These are my rough notes. Take all with a pinch of salt.

The day reaffirmed my view of Summon, it is ground breaking in the Library market, and with no major stumbling blocks. They are very aware that coverage is key and seem to be adding items and publishers. It searches items that a organisation has access to (though users can tick a option to search all items in the kb, not just those they can access). They have good metadata, merging records from a number of sources, and making use of subject headings (to refine or exclude from the search).