A Digital Branch: Your Next Generation Library Catalogue

Like many of you, I follow what David Lee King has to say. His ideas on digital branches, what they are and their capabilities excite me. However, where David promotes a digital branch through a library website, I believe that a library’s digital branch should be delivered through the library catalogue.
While my copy [...]

Cataloguing Potpourri

A couple of interesting items for discussion have come across various listservs lately. So, while many of you may have seen the following items, I thought I’d post them for those who haven’t.
Article of Interest
After losing users in catalogs, libraries find better search software
This is an article by Marc Parry in the Chronicle of High [...]

What’s in a word?

Catalogablog had an interesting post on Friday.   An excerpt:
… Beth Jefferson from Bibliocommons said she doesn’t refer to their product as a social ILS. Amazon is not called a social book seller, they have lots of social content and tools, but that is just the way the Web works now. They are just a book [...]

APLA 2009: Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference is taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia this year.  At the pre-conference tomorrow, I’m presenting at the RA in a Day session.  This is exciting and a great opportunity for cataloguers.  I’m speaking on social catalogues and what impact social software and social catalogues have and will continue to have on Readers’ [...]

Social Catalogues – Slides in a more compatible format

In my last blog post, I uploaded the Powerpoint slides in the .pptx format, which opens easily only if you have the latest Office 2007 package.  So, I’m posting them here in the 1997-2003 format for all to access. 
Social Cataloguing Site: Features and Implications for Cataloguing Practice and the Public Library Catalogue
Social Catalogues: The New [...]

CLA: Slides to the Social Catalogue Session

For those of you who are interested, here are the slides from the Social Cataloguing presentation that Dr. Louise Spiteri and I gave at CLA. 
Social Cataloguing Sites: Features and Implications for Cataloguing Practice and the Public Library Catalogue, presented by Dr. Louise Spiteri
Social Catalogues: The New Face of the Public Library Catalogue, presented by Laurel Tarulli
We [...]

CLA – Final Thoughts

A couple of days have now passed since I gave my presentation.  With over 100 attendees, resulting in a standing room only audience, I was very excited to see the interest among other professionals in social catalogues.  I think it went really well and I enjoyed myself immensely.  The audience was attentive, no one was [...]

Choosing a Discovery Tool

So, you’ve decided that you want a social catalogue, a discovery tool (and often referred to as a “solution” or “platform”).  How are you going to decide which one?  What if you don’t even know about them?
Like any software, discovery tools have their problems. You can find a number of articles discussing the technical difficulties [...]

Social Catalogue – CLA and APLA conference summary

I have only just realized that the pdf of the conference summary I posted the other day is not easy to access.  You have to right click on the image and open the link to view.  So, to make it easier, I’ve posted the summary below.

The Impact of Social Cataloguing Sites on the Public Library [...]

The Impact of Social Cataloguing Sites on the Public Library Catalogue: Patrons, Social Tagging and the New Face of the Catalogue

Dr. Louise Spiteri and I will be presenting on the above topic at both the Canadian Library Association Conference in Montreal as well the Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference in Halifax.
I’ve attached a short conference summary about this presentation.