[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SPAM: Serials Management and the Collaborative Itch

[Geoff Sinclair]

Mark Leggott wrote:
> One could also think a little more creatively and not sync changes 
> between the 2, but rather enable both databases into a search from the 
> OPAC - in other words searching in the OPAC would conduct a search on 
> both Evergreen and CUFTS at the same time, mashing results back to the 
> user. Adding a "federated search" capability into the Evergreen 
> front-end would have benefits elsewhere as well. One of the compelling 
> features of Evergreen for us was the modular architecture - in fact I 
> would argue that Evergreen already provides a nice OLE-like 
> architecture for building modular library frameworks, so why not show 
> how it can be done?

I like this approach because it's cleaner conceptually, but what about 
the performance considerations (both response time and search 
functionality)? And, since you're already syncing now, have you built a 
real-time feed, or are you doing a nightly batch?

More generally, we plan to shift our systems and workflows to focus 
primarily on e-journals, reducing the time and money spent on print, and 
we believe this will benefit our patrons. Our e-journal holdings aren't 
even in our OPAC, but, through some customization, we have managed to 
get our print and microfilm holdings into our OpenURL resolver (SFX). I 
wonder if having 5% of our journals in the OPAC is worse than having 
none at all...understandably, our patrons have a hard time understanding 
where to go to find our resources.

Geoff

-- 
Geoff Sinclair
Manager of Technical Services
Education Centre Library, Nipissing University / Canadore College
Tel: 705-474-3450 x4439
E-mail: geoffs at nipissingu.ca
Web: http://www.eclibrary.ca