Usability of the VuFind Next-Generation Online Catalog, by Jennifer Emanuel

The VuFind open–source, next-generation catalog system was implemented by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois as an alternative to the WebVoyage OPAC system. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began offering VuFind alongside WebVoyage in 2009 as an experiment in next-generation catalogs. Using a faceted search discovery interface, it offered numerous improvements to the UIUC catalog and focused on limiting results after searching rather than limiting searches up front. Library users have praised VuFind for its Web 2.0 feel and features. However, there are issues, particularly with catalog data.

Next-Generation Library Catalogs and the Problem of Slow Response Time, by Margaret Brown-Sica, Jeffrey Beall, and Nina McHale

Response time as defined for this study is the time that it takes for all files that constitute a single webpage to travel across the Internet from a Web server to the end user’s browser. In this study, the authors tested response times on queries for identical items in five different library catalogs, one of them a next-generation (NextGen) catalog. The authors also discuss acceptable response time and how it may affect the discovery process. They suggest that librarians and vendors should develop standards for acceptable response time and use it in the product selection and development processes.

The Next Generation Library Catalog: A Comparative Study of the OPACs of Koha, Evergreen, and Voyager, by Sharon Q. Yang and Melissa A. Hofmann

Open source has been the center of attention in the library world for the past several years. Koha and Evergreen are the two major open-source integrated library systems (ILSs), and they continue to grow in maturity and popularity. The question remains as to how much we have achieved in open-source development toward the next-generation catalog compared to commercial systems. Little has been written in the library literature to answer this question. This paper intends to answer this question by comparing  the next-generation features of the OPACs of two open-source ILSs (Koha and Evergreen) and one proprietary ILS (Voyager’s WebVoyage).

Metadata to Support Next-Generation Library Resource Discovery: Lessons from the eXtensible Catalog, Phase 1 by Jennifer Bowen

Abstract:
The eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project at the University of Rochester will design and develop a set of open-source applications to provide libraries with an alternative way to reveal their collections to library users. The goals and functional requirements developed for XC reveal generalizable needs for metadata to support a next-generation discovery system. The strategies that the XC Project Team and XC Partner Institutions will use to address these issues can contribute to an agenda for attention and action within the library community to ensure that library metadata will continue to support online resource discovery in the future.

LITA members may read the full text of this article at http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litapublications/ital/272008/2702jun/bowen.cfm. Discussion of the article will be open from 18 August to 15 September 2008.