Since I’m late to the game I will steal borrow a couple of trends that my esteemed colleagues have already noted and throw in one of my own. New Catalog Possibilities – Starting with NCSU’s Endeca-powered catalog, there has been a definite trend of moving to systems not marketed by the typical (and now smaller) set of library vendors. Another option that large libraries and consortia in particular are exploring is using some form of WorldCat from OCLC as their catalog. Still more options can be found in the open source world, with Koha and now Evergreen. In fact, I believe that Sept. 5, 2006 will long be remembered as the day when the ILS world irrevocably changed. This is the day over 250 Georgia libraries began using an open source ILS they wrote themselves from scratch. The potential significance of this is hard to overstate. Open source goes mainstream…
Author: Roy Tennant
Metasearch Bake-off
Metasearching is hard. Metasearching well is darn near impossible. Meanwhile, hapless libraries are left trying to sort out the good from the not so good vendor offerings. Wouldn’t it be nice if LITA put together a “bake-off” of metasearch applications? Like picking half-a-dozen or so databases that all must set up and then running some test queries and comparing results? Other issues such as the amount of work required to customize them would be useful as well, although potentially more time consuming to determine. So is it just me, or would such a thing be interesting to others as well?
Keynote Slides
Slides of Roy Tennant’s Forum talks
Tennant's Top Tech Trend Tidbit
One of my Top Tech Trends, because I’m too much of a procrastinator to do more.