Marshall Breeding at Library Technology Guides has published Perceptions 2009: An International Survey of Library Automation. The survey asked about levels of satisfaction with various companies libraries use for their ILS, as well as information on open source products.
From librarytechnology.org:
Top survey findings
- Products and companies focusing on smaller libraries and narrower niches generally receive higher perception scores than those involved with larger, more complex organizations that and that serve multiple types of libraries.
- Apollo, a system adopted exclusively by small public libraries topped the charts in ILS, company, support perceived satisfaction and in company loyalty, following the formula for success mentioned above. Most libraries adopting Apollo have migrated from abandoned products such as Winnebago Spectrum and Athena.
- Libraries operating AGent Verso from Auto-Graphics and Polaris from Polaris Library Systems continue to receive extremely high scores, consistent with previous editions of this survey.
- Companies and products serving large and complex library organizations and diverse library types receive a broader range of responses, and fall into a middle tier of rankings. Yet where they fall within this middle ground represents important differences. Millennium from Innovative Interfaces, Library.Solution from The Library Corporation, and Evergreen as supported by Equinox Software came out as very strong performers at the top of this middle tier.
- Companies supporting proprietary ILS products receive generally higher satisfaction scores than companies involved with open source ILS. Evergreen, primarily supported by Equinox Software fell into the middle tier of satisfaction ratings. LibLime received especially poor marks in customer satisfaction; libraries implementing Koha independently gave themselves high ratings.
- Except for the libraries already using an open source ILS, the survey reflected low levels of interest, even when the company rates their satisfaction with their current proprietary ILS and its company as poor. Other than libraries already running an open source ILS, and for Winnebago Spectrum and Athena, the mode score from libraries using proprietary ILS products was 0. These results fail to confirm the trend of broad-based interest in open source ILS; rather we observe a minority of early adopters voicing strong support.
A new article in the Journal of Library Administration talks about the path that library systems have followed, and what we can expect from the future. Written by Andrew Pace at OCLC.
Pace, A. (2009). 21st Century Library Systems. Journal of Library Administration, 49(6), 641-650.
DOI: 10.1080/01930820903238834
The University of Rochester has been working steadily on a project called the eXtensible Catalog, or XC.
XC is meant to provide a discovery layer to work along with existing library systems. They’re working on creating “services” that will transform various formats of resources and data into a common format that can be delivered to users in a unified interface.
They are using Drupal as their content management system, which could be useful for us here, since we’re using Drupal as well. They’re also working on Blackboard integration.
There is a set of 6 screencasts that describe the functionality of XC, how it works, and what can be expected from the project. He discusses the challenges presented by library metadata, including the transition from existing MARC data and RDA.
Code4Lib has a new article from NC State that discusses the search patterns they’ve discovered using their web stats. A couple of interesting observations:
Users search text more often than they use facets. This may seem obvious, but could question the importance so many people place on faceted browsing in catalogs. Further, it could be that when facets are desired, they jump up in importance, enough so that people mark “points off” for not having it.
Text searching tends to decrease over the course of a session. Maybe people start their session with a text query, then adjust using clickable links.
Some facet groups are used significantly more frequently than others. The study shows that Subject/Topic, LC call number and Format account for 67% of all facets selected.
Take a look, it’s a brief and interesting article, especially if you are into stats and methodology. If not, skip to the end and read the discussion/conclusion. It’s only a few paragraphs.
For those of you following the XC project at the University of Rochester, here’s the latest update.
[From a post to the LITA list from Jennifer Bowen at UR.]
The eXtensible Catalog project at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries is pleased to release the first report on the user research that we conducted in support of XC software development. We thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and our user research partners – Cornell, Ohio State, Yale and the University of Rochester – for their generous support of this project.
Use this URL – http://hdl.handle.net/1802/6873 – for a report that summarizes the objectives, methods, and major software design findings from the data collected in the user research portion of the eXtensible Catalog (XC) project. A full analysis and interpretation of the data is not included in the present report and will be provided at the conclusion of the project. This report includes edited results from the brainstorming sessions and a list of the features that emerged from the analysis of those results. (See the eXtensible Catalog website at www.eXtensibleCatalog.org for more information about the overall project.)
WorldCat.org is now accessible via your mobile phone. OCLC has created a downloadable application for several operating systems via Boopsie. I have a Palm OS, and found it really easy to download the applications (you have to download both the WorldCat app and the Boopsie search app) and the search seems to work fine. I wasn’t able to connect directly from the Palm WorldCat app to the Drexel catalog, but it looks like the iPhone app does do this, once you choose a library which whom you are affiliated.
I’d be interested in hearing what you all think about this, especially from you iPhone users out there. Is it easy to use? Do you see any value in this kind of offering?
John Blyberg has just released a new site offering a community for users of the SOPAC Drupal module. The module offers integration between the library catalog and Drupal, featuring tags, reviews and ratings. He’s got a couple of installations under his belt at Ann Arbor District Public’s catalog and Darien Public’s catalog which is definitely running the new version.
