Open Forum Recap 3/7

We started last Friday's Open Forum by asking attendees to respond to the following questions:

"In the future, what should be the scope of the Libraries' online catalog - that is, what kinds of information should it contain? Should it only include library owned or leased items or should everything in the information universe be included? Why?"

We received some very thoughtful responses and I will post about those a little later.

Next, we demonstrated two next generation resource discovery tools. They were Ex Libris' Primo and OCLC's WorldCat Local. Following our quick presentations of these products, we asked you to vote on which one you preferred. 18 were for WorldCat Local, 3 people liked Primo, and 3 of you didn't like either of them :).

You can try searching Primo and WorldCat Local on your own at the following sites:

Primo
University of Iowa Libraries
University of Minnesota Libraries
Vanderbilt University Libraries

WorldCat Local
San Mateo County Library
University of Washington Libraries
(Remember, anyone can create a WorldCat account to see personalization features.)

Karen also discussed an open source project centered at the University of Rochester called EXtensible Catalog. They do not have a product to demo at this point in the project.

Finally, Sue closed the session by reading a wonderful piece she wrote about why we might want to consider exploring open source options. She is going to post the text of that document in a separate entry.

It certainly was a very full hour. We hope you didn't find it too overwhelming! Thanks again for your continued support.