Search results

The semantic Web is an exciting prospect, but not yet a reality, for researchers who are faced with an ever‐increasing range of material – some freely available and some accessible to them only by virtue of their affiliation. This paper introduces the concept of the semantic Web and indicates how, if realized, the semantic Web could be of great benefit to researchers. Some parallel activities now under way are aimed at providing practical solutions to scholars today through the use of agent technology built into library portals; the paper explains, in particular, how one system, MetaLib – the library portal solution from Ex Libris – addresses these issues.

The purpose of this article is to describe the need for and realization of a new kind of interface for searching and obtaining library materials, an interface designed around user needs and decoupled from, though interoperating with, current library systems.

The paper describes a product that was released in May 2007 – the Primo^® system from Ex Libris – as an example of a new solution for the discovery and delivery of library collections. The paper deals with the issues involved in the design of the product, the way in which the product was built to address the needs of both information seekers and libraries, and the use of usability studies to affirm the overall design and help shape fine points of the interface.

The paper demonstrates how users' expectations, which emanate from the everyday experience on the internet, can be addressed by library software in a way that corresponds to librarians' requirements and suits and libraries' technological infrastructure.

Using a concrete example, this paper demonstrates how the design of a discovery and delivery interface for library materials can satisfy the expectations of users who are accustomed to services on the web and can help libraries attract such users back to the library environment, where they can obtain credible, trustworthy scholarly content.

The purpose of this paper is to offer some insight into changes that are occurring in the expectations and behaviour of researchers seeking scholarly information and the ways in which libraries and vendors are addressing these changes in light of the availability of Web 2.0 technologies.

The paper investigates current trends in information seeking, defines and describes factors that contribute to an up‐to‐date, user‐centric library experience, and examines the movement of vendors and libraries toward such a library experience.

The paper identifies aspects of new library interfaces that attempt to satisfy the needs of today's information seekers and describes a new approach for creating a user experience layer for library collections. The Primo® discovery and delivery system from Ex Libris serves as an example of a library interface that was designed in light of this new approach.

As more organisations become concerned about the decreasing use of their library collections, this paper suggests ways in which libraries can adapt to the changing user expectations and maintain the relevance of their collections and services for today's information seekers.

The demand for metasearch capabilities – which enable users to simultaneously search heterogeneous information resources – is constantly increasing in the scholarly information environment as the number of available resources grows. To make efficient and accurate metasearching possible, library technology has begun to address several issues. First, information about resources must be accessible to metasearch systems. Such information, called resource metadata, can be made available to metasearch systems in various ways. Second, a metasearch system must be able to convert a unified query as necessary and adapt it to the requirements of each searched resource, retrieve the results, and display them to the end‐user in a comprehensive and friendly manner. Finally, because some repositories are not available to metasearch systems, local indexes can be created to access them. The MetaLib library portal from Ex Libris is used to provide examples where relevant.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a hybrid model of library software development, according to which libraries implement commercial software products and extend them with locally developed or community developed open‐source components.

The paper draws on the following sources to describe several approaches to providing software that addresses the specific needs of individual libraries: commercial and community organizations' public statements of aims, philosophies, policies, and processes; e‐mail interviews; and e‐mail discussion lists. Data from a customer‐accessed collaborative web site are offered in an examination of the approach taken by one vendor, Ex Libris, to developing and supporting systems that customers can extend, customize, and integrate with other systems.

A little more than a year after the Ex Libris open‐platform program was launched, active community interaction in the creation and sharing of code extensions to the vendor's commercial systems was observed.

Community initiatives, a long part of the library tradition, are becoming common in library software development. Very few libraries have the resources required to carry out large software projects; however, by leveraging the resources of the community to develop and exchange code that enhances and customizes commercial solutions, all libraries, regardless of their resources, stand to benefit from commercial solutions in a cost‐effective way.

Libraries that are in the market for a software solution and are comparing commercial products with open‐source initiatives can benefit from this description of a hybrid model in which libraries maximize their investment in a commercial product by leveraging their staff's expertise and community support.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the trends and standards in electronic‐resource management (ERM).

This paper examines the challenges that rapid growth in the number of electronic resources and in the complexity of managing e‐collections has posed for libraries, and traces the progress in developing tools and setting standards to address such challenges. Particular emphasis is given to the work of the Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative (DLF ERMI) to develop ERM systems not only for managing e‐collections throughout their life cycle but also for aiding collection‐development decision making. The integration of such systems in existing library environments and the mechanisms that make such integration possible are highlighted. Finally, the paper describes the collaborative process through which one vendor, Ex Libris, designed its ERM system, Verde.

Collaboration between vendors and customers – in this example, Ex Libris and its users – combined with attentiveness to industry initiatives and standards can lead to a system design that responds to the demanding and rapidly changing requirements of the e‐resource world and builds on the software infrastructure already available at libraries.

This discussion will help librarians who struggle with the challenge of e‐resource management to set their expectations about the potential of future tools to assist them in their tasks.

The 25th annual seminar of the European Library Automation Group (ELAG) was held in Prague in June 2001. This report provides an overview of the papers presented, including those describing relevant developments in the Czech Republic, those covering the theme of the seminar (the integration and linking of electronic resources), as well as papers on the functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR). Workshops are a key feature of ELAG seminars and the paper also reports on those held during the 2001 meeting.

Provides a summary of the main topics of the European Library Automation Group (ELAG) conference in Trondheim, Norway, June 2004. Notes that the title of the conference was "Interoperability: New Challenges and Solutions", but it was clear that both for organizers and participants many of the current challenges of interoperability lie in library portals. States that many of the papers presented dealt with some aspect of portal design or implementation, and others touched on issues that were clearly relevant to portal applications. Several other papers focused on different aspects of information processing in the host country