Abstract
The VuFind open–source, next-generation catalog system was implemented by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois as an alternative to the WebVoyage OPAC system. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began offering VuFind alongside WebVoyage in 2009 as an experiment in next generation catalogs. Using a faceted search discovery interface, it offered numerous improvements to the UIUC catalog and focused on limiting results after searching rather than limiting searches up front. Library users have praised VuFind for its Web 2.0 feel and features. However, there are issues, particularly with catalog data.
Highlights
The VuFind open–source, next-generation catalog system was implemented by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois as an alternative to the WebVoyage OPAC system
V uFind is an open–source, next-generation catalog overlay system developed by Villanova University Library that was released to the public as beta in 2007 and version 1.0 in 2008.1 As of July 2009, four institutions implemented VuFind as a primary catalog interface, and many more are either beta or internally testing it.[2]
Most users looked at the Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) record with confusion, including one graduate student who said, “If the staff view is of no use to the user, why even have it there?” One other useful feature that individual records in VuFind contain is a link to an overlay window containing the full citation information for the item in both APA and MLA formats
Summary
Librarians have complained about the usability of online catalogs since they were first created.[4] When Amazon.com became the go-to site for books and book information in the early 2000s, librarians and their users began to harshly criticize both OPAC interfaces and metadata standards.[5] Ever since North Carolina State University announced a partnership with the commercial-search corporation Endeca in 2006, librarians have been interested in the generation of library catalogs and more broadly, discovery systems designed to help users discover library materials, not find them.[6] As a result, the past five years have been filled with commercial OPAC providers releasing next-generation library interfaces that overlay existing library catalog information and require an up-front investment by libraries to improve search capabilities As these systems are inherently commercial and require a significant investment of capital, several open–source, next-generation catalog projects have emerged, such as VuFind, Blacklight, Scriblio, and the eXtensible Catalog Project.[7]. VuFind is one option among many in the genre of next-generation or discovery-catalog tools
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