NCSU OPAC
The new North Carolina State University library catalogue has been getting attention, and it deserves it. It’s good. Since it’s something new, some library bloggers have been rigorous with their testing and criticism because it can be compared to an ideal and not just the crummy real systems most of us have to use, but there’s no denying it’s far better than most OPACs, and it’s going to get better. I congratulate all the people who worked on it: well done!
As soon as I saw the OPAC, I wondered if they’d thought about FRBR and had any plans to use it. I e-mailed Andrew Pace, head of systems at the library, and he replied:
Yes, we thought about FRBR, and it is on our todo list (see more info at
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca/). Endeca has a feature called record rollup that will cover this. We are mocking up the displays and determining what our matchpoint rules are, based on what LC, OCLC, and others are doing.
From the FAQ about Endeca on the site:
What are NCSU’s plans for future development?
What you see now is very much a version 1.0 of the new online catalog. NCSU will continue to refine currently available features:
- item and serial record displays
- relevance algorithms
- spell correction, thesaurus, and “did you mean…” functionality
As well as develop new features:
- record-rollup, a FRBR implementation to display expressions of the same work in one place
- thesaurus control of subject authority records
- better integration with or replacement of the Web2/Unicorn interface
- shopping cart functionality
- RSS and Web Services functionality
Emphasis mine. More about FRBR and library catalogues tomorrow.