Exercise 7: Technology issue: Rant du jour

Technology issue: Rant du jour

Our University’s library is exploring the possibility of going with an OPAC other than the one offered by our Library Management System provider ExLibris. I can only say goodbye to Aleph and unresponsive providers.

We are returning to the innovations of the days of yore. Many of us remember the search engine Northern Lights. The Endeca interface certainly reminds us of this grandparent guided navigational system.

The advantage of the Endeca interface is the intuitive nature of the interface. Certainly if it is the navigational system used by Home Depot it must be the choice for no nonsense searchers. The interface allows the initial searched for term or terms to fall into broad categories so that the person searching can narrow according to their preferred path.

The only question is why it has taken so long to give our library users an intuitive interface. We do not go home and struggle with our TiVo. We simple push menu and fall through the channels with no challenging terminology. We must realize that most of our users simply want to arrive at the desired end — a DVD, or a reference source, or, more likely an online full-text article – that is only modest in length.

Let’s make life easy for our students and faculty. Endeca is a baby step in the right direction.