Enhancing Features of Library Automation Package by Integrating with Discovery Tool: A Case Study

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to explore the possibility of enhancing search and retrieval features of library automation package by integrating it with a discovery tool. PMB, a library automation package and Vufind, a discovery tool are used for demonstration purposes. PMB was selected as it uses simple LAMP architecture and hence is easy to install and use. But the Online Public Access (OPAC) of PMB does not have many features of new generation OAPCs. However, by integrating PMB into Vufind, which has most of the new generation OPAC features, enhanced features of the OPAC are made available in PMB itself. Also, PMB provides excellent and unique options for record import/export in various formats. This feature is used to export records from PMB and import it to Vufind. Generally, any integrated library automation package (ILAP) contains two modules: staff-client module and Online Public Access catalogue (OPAC). PMB is compatible with international standards: it makes use of Z39.50 server and supports UNIMARC format. Another unique feature in PMB is the facility to convert/ export of records using which records from one format can be converted to about 39 other formats. Though it has many good features, because it uses MySQL as back-end, it lacks many advanced search features in the OPAC. On the other hand, Vufind, a discovery tool uses Solr (Lucene java search library) as its back-end and has good search and retrieval features. For indexing bibliographic records, Vufind uses MARCSolr, through which MARC records are indexed using Solr search engine. This paper reports a study carried out to integrate into PMB search and retrieval features of Vufind.