Mark Your Calenders for a New Voyage

by Peter Spitzform

The time has finally arrived to assess commercial OPACs and discovery tools that will replace our Voyager front-end OPAC. These new products enable greater discovery of our vast and varied collections, allow us to provide more information about the materials we offer, and simplify the search process for our patrons. The Discovery and Delivery Council wrote an RFP that has resulted in 4 vendors being invited to Bailey/Howe to demonstrate their products.

These demonstrations will occur during upcoming Library Forums in the next couple of weeks. PLEASE come to these important demonstrations, if at all possible. We want as many people to weigh in on evaluating these products as possible so D&D can make the most informed decision about next steps.

The first Forum will be this coming Wednesday, February 23, at 11am in the Dean's Conference Room. Representatives from EBSCO will be demonstrating their product called EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). Please feel free to explore several sites where EDS has been implemented so you can get an idea of its functionality prior to the vendor's visit. http://www.lib.jmu.edu/, http://gilfind.uga.edu/vufind/Search/Home.

As a reminder, I'm attaching a copy of our criteria that we're using to evaluate each discovery tool.

Future forums: OCLC Worldcat Local demonstration, Tuesday, March 1, 2pm, Deans Conference Room. See http://www.lib.washington.edu/, http://www.library.cornell.edu/

Serials Solutions Aquabrowser demonstration, Tuesday, March 8, 1-3 p.m., Dean's Conference Room. See http://pittcatplus.pitt.edu/, http://aquabrowser.lib.ed.ac.uk/

Ex Libris Primo Discovery demonstration, Thursday, March 10, 3pm, Dean's Conference Room. See http://library.sbts.edu/, http://discoverlibrary.vanderbilt.edu/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=1&dstmp=1298043607503&vid=VANDERBILT&fromLogin=true

Please mark your calendars for these important presentations.