Mark Leggott wrote:
One could also think a little more creatively and not sync changes between the 2, but rather enable both databases into a search from the OPAC - in other words searching in the OPAC would conduct a search on both Evergreen and CUFTS at the same time, mashing results back to the user. Adding a "federated search" capability into the Evergreen front-end would have benefits elsewhere as well. One of the compelling features of Evergreen for us was the modular architecture - in fact I would argue that Evergreen already provides a nice OLE-like architecture for building modular library frameworks, so why not show how it can be done?
I like this approach because it's cleaner conceptually, but what about the performance considerations (both response time and search functionality)? And, since you're already syncing now, have you built a real-time feed, or are you doing a nightly batch?
More generally, we plan to shift our systems and workflows to focus primarily on e-journals, reducing the time and money spent on print, and we believe this will benefit our patrons. Our e-journal holdings aren't even in our OPAC, but, through some customization, we have managed to get our print and microfilm holdings into our OpenURL resolver (SFX). I wonder if having 5% of our journals in the OPAC is worse than having none at all...understandably, our patrons have a hard time understanding where to go to find our resources.
Geoff -- Geoff Sinclair Manager of Technical Services Education Centre Library, Nipissing University / Canadore College Tel: 705-474-3450 x4439 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.eclibrary.ca
