(The following was posted to the FRBR Review Group Discussion List this morning - I think this will be an interesting project to follow, especially as a cataloger. We have been losing more and more users to Internet search engines because of confusing OPAC displays and the unforgiving way in which most OPACs function in terms of searching.)
The University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries have received a $283,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to begin planning and requirements analysis for the development of an open-source online system to unify access to traditional and digital library resources. The new system, known as eXtensible Catalog (XC), has the potential to allow future library users to get more out of academic library collections, and to give academic libraries more control over how best to help library users gather information.
The first phase of the analysis will produce a plan that will include:
- A survey of related projects that will assess the feasibility of bringing together and building upon work being done at other institutions
- An analysis of freely-available source code that could be
incorporated into the development of XC - Outreach to other academic institutions doing similar work at libraries
- Recommendations for the metadata requirements of the new system, informed by data models that focus on how metadata helps people gather and understand information
- An analysis of existing user studies and recommendations for additional studies of user practices to guide the development of XC
- An analysis of needs for the XC system within academic
libraries
The complete press release for the project is available at:
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2518. For additional information, please contact one of the XC Co-Principal Investigators:
David Lindahl, Director of Digital Initiatives
(davidl@library.rochester.edu)
Jennifer Bowen, Head of Cataloging (jbowen@library.rochester.edu) Nancy Fried Foster, Lead Anthropologist (nancyf@library.rochester.edu)
