Attachment 7. B.

OPAC SUBCOMMITTEE QUARTERLY REPORT

August 21, 2006

Rich Bennett

SUL PSPC OPAC Subcommittee Chair

  1. FCLA (Jim Corey) notified Ex Libris of the decision to implement the Endecasoftware in July, 2006. We can all now talk more openly about this decision.
  1. FCLA staff received Endeca training in Gainesvillethe week of July 17-21.
  1. After collaborating with FCLA’s Jim Corey, CSUL Chair Derrie Perez sent a message about the Endeca decision to the CSUL and all CSUL Committee/Subcommittee chairs on 7/25/2006. This message is copied in Addendum #1.
  1. The message indicates that “FCLA's goal will be to eliminate as much of the Aleph OPAC as possible, eventually reaching close to 100% elimination.”As indicated previously, no significant and systematic discussion of the existing Aleph OPAC interface has occurred (or is anticipated) pending a clearer understanding of what (if any) role the Aleph OPAC itself will continue to play in an Endeca OPAC environment.
  1. On 8/15/2006 I sent a message to all of the CSUL Committee and Subcommittee listservs – and to FCLLIST inviting interested SUL staff to subscribe to LIBOPAC-L where we hope to centralize future OPAC discussions (following the successful SUL collaboration model we established for developing the WEBLUIS OPAC interface largely by email between the years 1997-2000). I also asked that PSPC repsmake sure that the information about Endeca -- and the invitation to join LIBOPAC-L –were communicated broadly at their institutions (or delegate this authority to their OPAC Subcommittee rep). As of 8/21/2006, 164 SUL staff are now subscribed to LIBOPAC-L.
  1. FCLA’sgeneral plan for implementing Endeca is described in the Addendum #1 message. They plan to build a prototype based on the North CarolinaStateUniversity catalog as a starting point; this is expected to be available sometime in the fall. They will then involve appropriate CSUL committees/subcommittees.
  1. Since we can begin getting a "feel" for Endeca looking at NCSU now rather than waiting for our prototype, we'll need to decide how much discussion to have before the FCLA prototype is actually available. The NCSU catalog presents only one institution’s OPAC records while the SUL will need to present 11, and there may be issues that will be better discussed once the FCLA prototype is available.

OPAC Subcommittee Addendum #1

Message Sent on 7/25/2006 to CSUL and Committee/Subcommittee Chairs by CSUL Chair, Derrie Perez

From: Perez, Derrie [mailto:
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:02 PM
To: Barry Baker ; Cecilia Botero - HCL; Dan North - UWF; Derrie Perez ; Eleanor Lomax; Geraldine Collins; John Ingram; Kristine Shrauger; Monica Metz-Wiseman; Naomi Young; Phyllis Ruscella; Priscilla Williams; Rich Bennett; Robb Waltner; Robert Shaddy; Susan Wartzok - FIU; Todd Chavez
Cc: Bill Miller (E-mail); Bill Summers; Dale Canelas ; Dana Sally; Jim Corey ; Joan Pelland; Kathleen Miller; Lauren Sapp (E-mail); Shirley Hallblade ; Toni Downs; Barbara Bausher; Deborah Lightfoot ; Florence Jandreau; Gabrielle Holcombe ; Jan DeCarlo; Lucy Carroll; Michele Kenny; Misty Swain; Raynette Kibbee; Shanna Barber; Vivian Walker ; Willie Miller
Subject: Endeca is on its way!!

Colleagues:

At our meeting on June 8th at UWF, the CSUL approved the purchase of Endeca software by FCLA for use as an alternative to the Aleph OPAC. Endeca is currently in operation at the NCSU library. See

To get a broader understanding of Endeca, you can also visit the Endeca website at It has general information about the product as well as links to various customer sites.

Endeca's main purpose is to provide users with a more helpful searching experience by providing more guidance to users especially in narrowing searches that are too broad. The current buzz word for this function is "guided navigation." However, since "guided navigation" has become a status phrase, many companies are now using it to describe whatever their product does or hopes to do in the future. The best way to learn how Endeca's guided navigation works in a library environment is to try out the NCSU catalog.

One important point to understand about the Endeca software is that it can integrate with existing web services so that users will sometimes be getting information from Endeca and other times from a legacy system.

For instance, at NCSU some of the retrieved information comes from Endeca and some comes from their Sirsi system. For us, this means that FCLA can build Endeca on top of Aleph using Endeca for much of the searching and, where necessary, fall back on the Aleph OPAC. FCLA's goal will be to eliminate as much of the Aleph OPAC as possible, eventually reaching close to 100% elimination. Endeca can also collect data from Digitool so we expect Endeca to combine metadata from Digitool with that from Aleph to present users with a more complete catalog without library staff constantly copying Digitool metadata into Aleph or vice versa.

FCLA intends to install an Endeca prototype following the model established by NCSU. NCSU made many decisions about what fields of bibliographic, holdings and circulation data to pass over to Endeca and even more decisions about how Endeca should index these fields. The NCSU prototype will give FCLA the necessary experience in setting up Endeca and making it work with SUL data. As FCLA learns how to control Endeca and understands Endeca options along with NCSU's decisions for those options, FCLA will pass that information on to the various CSUL committees and subcommittees for discussion and advice. As committees reach consensus on issues, FCLA will modify the prototype changing it gradually into a set of SUL catalogs plus a union catalog. During this process we expect the Aleph OPAC Subcommittee of PSPC to have the major role; but, TSPC and DDAC will also provide input for certain issues.

This email announcement is just the beginning of a lengthy process of dialog that will be followed by more dialog. FCLA intends to have a prototype up sometime this Fall. Modifications to the prototype will occur just as fast as committees and subcommittees can reach consensus and FCLA can make changes. At this stage it is too early to set a date for going live for students and faculty. That will depend on progress in the coming months.

We are aware that Ex Libris is in the process of developing a "guided navigation" product which they have named Primo. FCLA will follow the development of Primo and CSUL committees should as well. Should the day come when Primo surpasses Endeca in capability, we will reassess our course of action. For now, Endeca exists and is much superior to the Aleph OPAC.

Please forward thismessage to your committee members. The directors and Jim and his staff thank youfor your patienceand participation as we continue to work together on yet another improvement to our system!! Derrie

Derrie R. Perez, EdD, MLS [CSUL Chair, 2006]
Dean, USF Library System
Asst. Prof. / SLIS
4202 E. Fowler Ave, LIB 122
Tampa, FL 33620-5400
813.974.1642v/813.974.5153f

OPAC Subcommittee Addendum #2

Message sent on 8/15/2006 to FCLLIST and CSUL Committee/Subcommittee Listservs by Rich Bennett inviting SUL staff to join LIBOPAC-L

From: Rich Bennett

Sent:Tuesday, August 15, 2006 2:00 PM

To:'FCLLIST'; 'SUSPSPC-L'; 'SUSOPAC-L'; 'SUSCIRC-L'; 'SUSINFOLIT-L'; 'SUSILL-L'; 'TS-PLAN'; 'SUSCAGER-L'; 'SULCMC-L'; 'SUSECC - L'; SUS Digitization Committee; 'LMS - LMSPROJECT-L'; 'SUSAUTH-L'

Subject:FCLA's Purchase of Endeca for SUL OPAC Development - Invitation to Join LIBOPAC-L

Hello,

If you are receiving this message more than once, I apologize for the duplication. I am sending it to a number of FCLA and SUL listservs concurrently in an effort to insure that broad communication has occured about the recent purchase of the Endeca software by FCLA for the purpose of developing an enhanced OPAC interface for the SUL. Although I believe that many of you may have been aware that FCLA was investigating Endeca, my impression is that communication about this has been very uneven.

Since some of you may not yet have seen the official announcement sent on 7/25 about this software having actually been acquired by FCLA, I have included that message from Derrie Perez (CSUL Chair) below. Please read that message before asking any questions about Endeca, FCLA's plan to develop the initial prototype, etc.

AND IF YOU DO HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO LIBOPAC-L, a listserv that was set up some time ago for "State University Libraries OPAC Interface Discussions", where we hope to centralize discussions. Some/many of you will remember that from 1997-2000, much of the development of the WebLUIS interface occurred as a result of discussions on a similar listserv, WEBLUIS-L. Even though the WebLUIS Task Force charged with WebLUIS development had a separate "business" listserv, our process was designed to enable any SUL staff member to monitor development and/or contribute as much as they desired to the effort. Issues that happened to be raised on other SUL listservs were generally re-routed to WEBLUIS-L in order to centralize OPAC-related discussions. This process worked very well then and we're hoping that this successful collaboration can be repeated on LIBOPAC-L.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SUBSCRIBING TO LIBOPAC-L, please send a message to with the message SUBSCRIBE LIBOPAC-L your name in the body. Nothing should be entered in the SUBJECT.

Rich Bennett

Chair, SUL PSPC OPAC Subcommittee

E-Access Services Coordinator

University of Florida Libraries

352.392.6428

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