librarian joke

I went to a panel discussion the “Catalog Transformed” featuring Andrew Pace, John Blyberg, Jina Wakimoto, Jill Newby and Cindy Levine. Andrew showed off their Endeca-based OPAC and explained why it had a feature set that ran circles around all the other currently available tools. Cindy did some sample searches and generally showed the thing off. John Blyberg, speaking about his ILS Customers Bill of Rights started out this way, “How many people in this room are satisfied with their OPAC?” No one raised their hand… except for, after a moment, Andrew Pace. Bump, set, spike.

NCSU Libraries new “pig butchering” OPAC

We talk a lot about what library catalogs could look like, but who is building them? Well, Andrew Pace and NCSU for one. Here is the press release announcing their new Endeca-powered OPAC. Why is it different? It focuses on relevance instead of some arbitrary criteria — our OPAC at one of my old jobs would list DVDs by add date, so all the ones that showed up at the top a search list were labeled “IN PROCESS” and thus not available to patrons — and allows simple search narrowing. Andrew explains more. Don’t let me blather on about it, check it out yourself (and notice the slick URL while you’re at it). [web4lib]