The Birth of Catalog 2.0: Innovative Interfaces’ Encore Discovery Platform
| Date | 12 June 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050710780353 |
| Published date | 12 June 2007 |
| Pages | 13-15 |
| Author | Aimee Fifarek |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
The Birth of Catalog 2.0: Innovative Interfaces’
Encore Discovery Platform
Aimee Fifarek
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 5 2007, pp. 13-15, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050710780353 13
To say libraries are in transition
today would be the ‘‘grossest’’ of
understatements. In the last decade we
have come to realize that libraries are
not – like death and taxes – a fact of life.
As the OCLC Environmental Scan
(OCLC, 2003) made quite clear in 2003,
we are in competition with the world
around us. We compete for our user’s
attention – with TV, video games, the
Internet. As organizations, libraries
compete with businesses that seek to
meet both the intellectual and social
needs of today’s ‘‘information
consumer’’ (De Rosa et al., 2003) –
Google, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks.
How are libraries doing this?
By embracing the techniques used
by our competition. Merchandizing,
personalization and rapid delivery are
all at the heart of the ‘‘customer-
centered service’’ trend that is washing
through ‘‘library land’’. Patrons have
been banished. They are now customers,
consumers, guests. Rows upon rows of
spine-out book stacks are giving way
‘‘power walls’’ of attractive face-out
materials and computers that are as
likely to offer social networking
software as they are full text database
access. Librarians are being expected to
not only find materials to answer in-
depth questions but also help users find
the latest, hottest blogs with their WIFI-
enabled laptops.
Times have changed. But then there
is the online catalog – along with the
library professionals who know its
contents so well, the heart and soul of
the library. Despite the transition of
Interactive Library Systems (ILS)
vendors to client–server technologies
library catalogs often look, and
function, like they were still running on
mainframes, with their contents just one
step away from the 300 500 cards used
back in the ‘‘good old days’’.
Techie pundits have beenquestioning
for years the wisdom of allowing ILS
vendors to continue to have primary
responsibilityfor the online presence that
is most visible to our customers. They
look at the exciting things that appear
daily on the Web (usually and often for
free), and begin to salivate. The Online
Catalog looks positively prehistoric in
comparison to the exciting things that
appear dailyon the Web.
However, unlike the ‘‘free-associating,
unrestricted and disorderly’’ (OCLC,
2003) world of web technologies, it is
safe. The design is sound if boring, the
boolean logic of retrieval ensconced its
heart is reliable, if complex, and, most
importantly, library professionals know
how to use it. Librarians are same people
who contract with the vendors to deliver
the technologies that (we tell ourselves)
our users have come to expect. As Roy
Tennant said in his aptly titled article
‘‘Lipstick on a Pig’’, ‘‘Librarians appear
to be afflicted with a type of myopia. We
see only minor, easy-to-make corrections
instead of changes that will truly affect the
user experience’’(Tennant, 2005, p. 34).
Our new focus on the user – which is
really our new awareness that our
relevance is not guaranteed – has begun
to bring this disconnect into focus. All
the power walls in the world would not
hide the fact that we are offering
customers technology that peaked a
decade ago. If we are to stay relevant
then our technology must keep pace.
The library must be able to offer new
features and services with the rapidity
that users have come to expect from this
technological age. While ILS vendor
have started to integrate new
technologies into the traditional catalog,
the traditional development model that
we are all comfortable with only serves
to reinforce the emphasis on traditional
technologies. There is little room to
embrace the rapid-fire changes that our
users have increasingly come to expect
from web-technologies.
The tension between library catalog
and web has traditionally been seen as
one of order vs chaos.Only recently have
we come to realize that the tension is
really between the underlying mindsets
of the users. In the libr ary catalog,
information is organized and codified so
that it can be retrieved by the skilled
searcher. In the web world, getting the
information out there fast has been the
goal, and the tools that have enjoyed
the greatest success are those that
maximize the ability of the unskilled to
get the results that are good enough to
meet their needs. Therefore, what we are
really is the changing expectations of our
customers: the traditional library patron
and library professional focused on
searching vs thetypical internet user who
focuses on finding. Libraries today must
serve them both.
On 26 May 2006, Innovative
Interfaces announced the planned
development of Encore, ‘‘a new unified
search and access tool ... that]
leverages Web 2.0 technologies and
builds on the foundation of the
Millennium integrated library
technology platform’’ (Innovative,
2006a, b). Less than a year later, the
company has a working product
installed at over a dozen development
partner sites around the world even
while development continues on core
functionality. Its design – in terms of
both technology and display – rivals that
popular search engines and social
networking sites. But the fact that it
overlays, or provides an attractive and
stylish superstructure for traditional
library technologies continues to ensure
the stability of quality information that
libraries are known for. Could it be that
we are seeing the birth of Catalog 2.0?
According to Encore’s Product
Manager Dinah Sanders the goal in
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