Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving ForwardThis article explores two emerging solutions—next-gen catalogs and discovery products. A next-gen catalog provides an intuitive interface designed in accordance with current web standards. It incorporates features such as visually rich displays, virtual shelf browsing, a spell-check function, auto-completion options, and search-term suggestions, as well as social features that encourage patron participation, such as tagging, ranking, and reviews. The discovery products are a new type of software-an interface that layers on top of the library management system (LMS). It provides the capability to simultaneously search for material in the library's local collection, articles in subscription databases, and digital collections managed locally

Breeding, Marshall

Toms, Sue

Weare, William H., Jr.

English

Texas A&M University

Weare, W. H., Jr., Toms, S., & Breeding, M. (2011). Moving forward: The next-gen catalog and the new  
 discovery tools. Library Media Connection 30(3), 54-57.  
 
 
Moving Forward: The Next-Gen Catalog and the New Discovery Tools 
 
William H. Weare, Jr., Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN  
Sue Toms, International School of Tanganyika, Tanzania  
Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 
 
Abstract 
This article explores two emerging solutions—next-gen catalogs and discovery products. A next-gen 
catalog provides an intuitive interface designed in accordance with current web standards. It 
incorporates features such as visually rich displays, virtual shelf browsing, a spell-check function, auto-
completion options, and search-term suggestions, as well as social features that encourage patron 
participation, such as tagging, ranking, and reviews. The discovery products are a new type of software-
an interface that layers on top of the library management system (LMS). It provides the capability to 
simultaneously search for material in the library's local collection, articles in subscription databases, and 
digital collections managed locally. 
 
Keywords 
Integrated library systems, library catalogs, library management systems,  
online library catalogs, school libraries  
 
The Version of Record of this manuscript was published in Library Media Connection in 2011.  
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  2 
 
Introduction 
Do your students prefer to use Google instead of the library catalog? Ever wondered why? 
Google is easier to use and delivers plenty of "good enough" resources to meet their needs. Yet we 
know that the quality of information sourced in this way falls far short of what we can offer through our 
resources. The current generation of online catalogs has two main problems. First, the look and feel of 
the interface doesn't reflect the conventions adhered to elsewhere on the web, and the functionality 
may fall short of current expectations. Second, the online catalog doesn't index the complete array of 
library collections, so students have to use other tools to access other types of material, such as 
magazine and journal articles. This article explores two emerging solutions-next-gen catalogs and 
discovery products. A next-gen catalog provides an intuitive interface designed in accordance with 
current web standards. It incorporates features such as visually rich displays, virtual shelf browsing, a 
spell-check function, auto-completion options, and search-term suggestions, as well as social features 
that encourage patron participation, such as tagging, ranking, and reviews. The discovery products are a 
new type of software-an interface that layers on top of the library management system (LMS). It 
provides the capability to simultaneously search for material in the library's local collection, articles in 
subscription databases, and digital collections managed locally. These discovery products include the 
Web 2.0 features listed above. However, these new products have not been developed primarily for 
school libraries. 
Terminology 
New terminology describes the differences in functionality between these new products. The 
legacy catalog, or Web 1.0 catalog, is still widely in use. The term next-gen catalog, sometimes referred 
to as Web 2.0 catalog or OPAC 2.0, refers to the new generation of online public access catalogs that 
integrate Web 2.0 technologies and social features. Discovery products consist of new software 
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  3 
 
developed to search a larger portion of the resources the library subscribes to or owns, not just the 
resources managed by the LMS. 
Legacy Catalogs 
Many school libraries use a proprietary LMS with an outdated interface that relies heavily on 
text. They fall short of contemporary web standards for intuitive usability and lack the visual features 
now standard throughout the web. Many do not offer sophisticated search and information delivery 
capabilities. For example, traditional catalogs do not correct for misspelled words or offer suggestions 
for alternative or related terms. Nor do traditional catalogs provide features such as the capacity to post 
user ratings or reviews, faceted navigation, and related resource recommendations. 
Because the legacy catalog addresses only the resources managed by the LMS—and because the 
variety of materials to which our libraries have access has grown—the legacy catalog has outlived its 
usefulness. While the LMS continues to be an indispensable tool for managing physical collections 
(books and media), articles available through subscription databases are generally outside its scope. 
Moving Beyond OPAC 1.0: The Next-Gen Catalog 
What features should the next-gen catalog include? Certainly the interface needs to have a 
modern look, feel, and functionality that meets the expectations of our students. Search help should 
include an auto-complete option, a spell-check function ("Did you mean…?"), and search term 
recommendations ("more like this"). Results should be ranked by relevancy. Results pages should 
include faceted navigation options. Web 2.0 and social networking functionality, such as the ability for 
patrons to add reviews, should be available. The interface should include visually rich displays such as 
tag clouds and virtual shelf browsing. We will review these features below. 
The library catalog could be the main information portal of the school, but its functionality 
needs to be as intuitive and attractive to our students as a Google search. Librarians should not have to 
teach students how to use the catalog. If a student cannot figure out how to use the features of the 
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  4 
 
catalog on his own, then the catalog has not met the level of usability that this generation expects. We 
tend to take interface functionality for granted—until we encounter one that doesn't function well. If 
the functionality of the interface frustrates the student, he will go elsewhere. 
Ask, Bing, Google, and Yahoo utilize an auto-complete option. As a user begins to type a query, 
suggested terms appear below the search box (before the user has struck the enter key) to help him 
select a search term. A library catalog should not be delivering a "no results found" message in response 
to a misspelled query; spelling errors and typing errors should not prevent students from finding results. 
A next-generation catalog will return a "Did you mean…?" message with spelling suggestions. 
Search term recommendations (or query recommendations) should not be delivered only for 
misspellings; the "Did you mean…?" feature might include related terms generated from a thesaurus or 
entered by the school librarian. As librarians we know the language specific to our school, and we could 
include topics used in our curriculum. A good recommendation system proactively delivers meaningful 
results. A "more like this" feature suggests related resources to patrons. This would function like 
Amazon's "frequently bought together" and "Customers who bought this item also bought…" 
recommendation features. 
Search engines list results according to relevancy, and our students expect that results from a 
catalog search will also be returned in relevancy-ranked order. Next-generation catalogs offer relevance 
as the default sort option. Options for sorting by publication date or alphabetical order (by author or 
title) should also be available. 
If a particular search has yielded a large number of results, faceted navigation allows the user to 
reduce the number of results to a smaller, more manageable set. The facets will be presented as a list 
alongside the results. The facet groups may include subject/topic, format/ media type, language, 
publication data/date, genre, and physical availability; some might show user-supplied tags or facet 
groups created by the librarian. A good faceted navigation system displays the number of items that will 
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  5 
 
be returned when a particular facet is selected. Such a tool allows students to drill down to find 
materials that will meet their particular needs. 
User-contributed comments, rankings, and reviews have become a web standard. For our 
catalogs to be attractive to our users, they need to be able to contribute and interact. Student 
comments could be approved or edited by the librarian before being displayed publicly. 
A related social feature is tagging. Our students may tag resources they have found in the 
catalog so that they can easily locate the items again. Librarians could also assign tags to resources, 
including cataloged websites, instead of creating pathfinders. Students would then search the tag, which 
could be the unit topic or theme title, and find all results useful to their study. 
Another common feature is the tag cloud, a visual representation of text. In search applications 
the tag cloud usually consists of key words or search terms. The frequency of each tag is shown with 
variation in font size. This visual cloud of terms can be used to explore related terms and concepts. 
Users can click on any of the terms in a tag cloud to retrieve related items. 
The legacy catalog has a text-oriented interface. One of the hallmarks of the next-generation 
catalog interface is its visual appeal. Virtual shelf browsing (or visual shelf browsing) reproduces shelf 
arrangement utilizing the call number and the shelving location, coupled with cover art display. Students 
can now browse the material to the left and right of the shelf position of any item and see what the 
material looks like. 
Discovery 
Despite all of these improvements, the central problem with the online catalog module of the 
LMS persists: the OPAC only addresses the resources managed by the LMS, and not the wealth of 
articles in databases to which the library subscribes. Many academic libraries have implemented a new 
discovery interface that provides a single point of access to more of the resources managed by the 
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  6 
 
library, including the items indexed in the LMS, content from the library's database subscriptions, and 
local digital resources. 
Most libraries provide far too many starting points. Currently, a student has to know to start 
with the online catalog when looking for print materials, search a number of different journal databases 
when looking for articles, wade through countless pathfinders or topic-specific wikis set up by the 
librarian, and explore the institutional repository when looking for local content. The ability of a 
discovery tool to provide access to full-text journal articles, photographs, sound recordings, appropriate 
websites, and videos—as well as to physical media available in the library—may motivate them to turn 
to the library's new OPAC to complete their assignments rather than to the open web. 
Many academic libraries, public libraries, and consortia now offer a single search of journal 
databases through federated search, or metasearch, allowing students to search multiple databases 
from a single search box. Unfortunately, federated search has significant limitations; it can be very slow, 
and the results list will often contain numerous duplicate citations. The return of results is slow because 
the search terms are transmitted to several preselected databases and each is searched separately, and 
then the results are merged into a single list for the user. There are many duplicates because results are 
being returned from multiple databases at the same time, and de-duplication is not very effective. The 
new discovery products index the content in advance through a comprehensive harvesting of targeted 
resources. The search query is sent to one comprehensive database. This should result in the faster 
return of results with fewer duplicate items in the results list. 
Another key difference between the discovery products and next-gen OPACs is that the new 
discovery product operates with the current LMS; it is not a replacement. Because discovery products 
operate independently of the LMS rather than replacing them, there is no need to make a wholesale 
change in the automation environment. This leaves a library the option to upgrade their LMS at a later 
date while expanding the search capabilities in the present. 
Weare, Toms, & Breeding – Moving Forward  7 
 
However, these discovery products have been primarily designed for—and adopted by—college 
and university libraries. These products have been implemented by some public libraries as well, but not 
by school libraries. Some that are commonly used include commercial products such as Encore 
(Innovative Interfaces), Primo (Ex Libris), and Summon (Serials Solutions), and open source products 
such as Blacklight and VuFind. 
Conclusion 
The next generation of online public access catalogs progresses beyond the legacy catalog in a 
number of areas: navigation is more intuitive, they are easier to use, and they have incorporated various 
aspects of social computing. The new discovery products not only include these features of the next-gen 
catalogs, but also address the larger issue of providing a single search portal for resources found beyond 
what has been indexed by the library catalog. It is crucial to invest in tools that will help students to 
access all of your content. 
Although the K-12 vendors currently do not offer this dream product, significant progress has 
been made, and we shouldn't wait for the advent of the ideal search and delivery product. We need to 
aim for improvement, not perfection. A modern interface that is more engaging for our students would 
be a good start. The challenge now is to have a discovery product specifically designed for the school 
library market. It will take a forward-thinking K-12 vendor to fast-track this concept and deliver a 
product tailored to meet our needs. School librarians can take an active role by insisting on the 
development of products that not only help us manage our local library operations efficiently and 
effectively, but that also embrace the next-generation vision so that our library becomes the 
indispensable information portal of our school. 
 


Moving Forward: The Next-Gen Catalog and the New Discovery Tools

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