Catalogue: a call-number lookup system or also a resource discovery tool?

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/kaantelm/antelman_lynema_pace.pdf

the catalog has become for many students
a call-number lookup system, with resource discovery
happening elsewhere

This article describes the new catalogue of North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries. The technology used is Endeca’s Information Access Platform. This allows, e.g., for faceted searching; in this article it is called faceted browsing and Endeca calls it Guided Navigation. An assessment study is reported based on log analysis, analysis of search results and usability testing.

Remarkable is the short implementation timeline: only 5 months. A critical factor was the belief of the library staff that “not all issues, particularly “edge cases,”
(i.e., rarely occurring scenarios) must be resolved before
releasing a new service.

See (or better hear) also the sound recording of the Access 2006 presentation by Tito Sierra on Improving the Catalogue Interface using Endecahttp://www.access2006.uottawa.ca/2006-10-12-03-sierra.mp3; the slides are here: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca/presentations/200610-access-endeca.ppt