Library Technology Guides

OCLC has made another foray (remember LS/2000?) into the online catalog arena by launching WorldCat Local, a version of WorldCat designed to replace the online catalog delivered as part of a library’s integrated library system. WorldCat Local competes among an emerging genre of next-generation library interfaces that includes AquaBrowser from Medialab Solutions, Endeca ProFind, Primo from Ex Libris, and Encore from Innovative Interfaces, as well as the online catalogs delivered as part of each ILS.

Medialab Solutions, the developer of the AquaBrowser search interface, has extended the product to enhance the way that users find library materials by roviding a mechanism for the Web search engines to harvest the contents of a library’s catalog. Most library catalogs are not friendly to the way that search engines harvest information for the inclusion in their indexes. Like many other databases, the contents of library catalogs fall within what is often called the “hidden Web” that holds information beyond the reach of search engines. Library catalogs typically employ a complex syntax including session keys that make it difficult for a search engine to systematically retrieve and index each record.