Comments on: Why Aquabrowser isn’t doing it for me http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/ Information culture, library weblog for English, Linguistics and Religion @ NTNU (plus some techie/librarian stuff) Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:29:27 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: brinxmat http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/#comment-552 brinxmat Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:35:55 +0000 http://infonatives.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-552 Honestly, you could do this with no problems whatsoever. The underlying OPAC is no better or worse than any other commercially available system. However, as a colleague newly arrived from BIBSYS said the other day: the problem with commercial OPAC providers is that they have no business plan. Aquabrowser has the added benefit of a colourful spider. The problem that Aquabrowser tries to solve is the age-old one of spewing out raw catalogue data to non-librarians; this doesn't really work so well. This is also the problem that mostly defeats Aquabrowser: standard catalogues don't contain data that is any good for presentation to library patrons. Since you're talking about a new library, you could fix your catalogue data so that it worked really well with Aquabrowser, but no library manager in their right mind would allow this kind of platform-specific cataloguing. In truth the OPAC is dead. It's especially dead for academic libraries because we went over to mostly electronic content ten years ago, and this content is very rarely searchable via the OPAC's interface. In respect to this, I've looked at two integrated search systems: <a href="http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/summa/" rel="nofollow">Summa</a> and Metalib's Primo. These are better systems for academic libraries in my opinion. Again, you could make your catalogue data available to Google for indexing (I say "could", but I really mean "should"). Honestly, you could do this with no problems whatsoever. The underlying OPAC is no better or worse than any other commercially available system. However, as a colleague newly arrived from BIBSYS said the other day: the problem with commercial OPAC providers is that they have no business plan.

Aquabrowser has the added benefit of a colourful spider.

The problem that Aquabrowser tries to solve is the age-old one of spewing out raw catalogue data to non-librarians; this doesn’t really work so well. This is also the problem that mostly defeats Aquabrowser: standard catalogues don’t contain data that is any good for presentation to library patrons.

Since you’re talking about a new library, you could fix your catalogue data so that it worked really well with Aquabrowser, but no library manager in their right mind would allow this kind of platform-specific cataloguing.

In truth the OPAC is dead. It’s especially dead for academic libraries because we went over to mostly electronic content ten years ago, and this content is very rarely searchable via the OPAC’s interface. In respect to this, I’ve looked at two integrated search systems: Summa and Metalib’s Primo. These are better systems for academic libraries in my opinion.

Again, you could make your catalogue data available to Google for indexing (I say “could”, but I really mean “should”).

]]> By: Gordon Russell http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/#comment-551 Gordon Russell Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:38:11 +0000 http://infonatives.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-551 Having read your review, I would like your thoughts on using Aquabrowser for a new start up library to replace the online catalog? Could it be done? Should it be? Thanks. Having read your review, I would like your thoughts on using Aquabrowser for a new start up library to replace the online catalog? Could it be done? Should it be? Thanks.

]]> By: Why Aquabrowser isn’t doing it for me « University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/#comment-178 Why Aquabrowser isn’t doing it for me « University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:35:02 +0000 http://infonatives.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-178 [...] Why Aquabrowser isn’t doing it for me Posted on February 19, 2008 by lilyheart http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/ [...] [...] Why Aquabrowser isn’t doing it for me Posted on February 19, 2008 by lilyheart http://infonatives.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/why-aquabrowser-isnt-doing-it-for-me/ [...]

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