AquaBrowser Online uses Platform Data
Submitted by Richard Wallis on Fri, 2006-10-13 13:26.
So what do you think of it? We would love to know.
- AquaBrowser Online as a concept and as a service.
- The two trial implementations for Islington Libraries and County Clare.
- The re-purposing of data contributed to the Talis Platform to enable this integration.
- The view of the catalog through an Aquabrowser Online interface.
- The linking to the library OPAC from within AquaBrowser Online.
All these aspects of this trial are of great interest to those involved. Drop your comments in this form and let us know what your opinions are.
Aquabrowser and Clare County Library
The very first time I saw Aquabrowser (on the Queens Library, New York website) I knew I wanted it for Clare County Library. Simple as that. On the very day that I received a quotation for its installation from the Irish distributors of Aquabrowser I got a phone call from Ian Corns of Talis. Would I like to pilot Aquabrowser for Talis? Talis would host the software, do all the work, and we could have a new interface with extraordinary new features, all linked to our existing collection housed on the Talis Platform. Of course I said 'yes please, Ian'.
We’ve had it for a few days now and we think it’s absolutely fantastic. But of course it could be even better:
Advanced searching and 'Select a Branch' - see the Queens Library Aquabrowser (http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/) - would be essential additions to our Aquabrowser if it was to be the sole interface for our OPAC. We could have two interfaces, but I'd rather not do that.
The 'show availability' link opens in a new window. I hate that. Maybe it can't be avoided...
We’d need a link to our library home page http://www.clarelibrary.ie/ from Aquabrowser, and from Aquabrowser to Prism (and vice versa).
There would be some issues with reconciling Aquabrowser fully with Prism. We’d want a link to our Prepared Searches on the Aquabrowser homepage. Colour schemes should be the same.
If the header in Aquabrowser was replaced by the header in Prism, maybe we’d have the best of both worlds…
I think that if you see library operations as the interplay between works, items and borrowers, then Aquabrowser is a great front-end for works, Prism is fine for items, which leaves the borrower data the last piece of the jigsaw to be sorted.
Talis have said to us that "We're working on integrating Keystone (another Talis product) so that the borrower's account information etc can be made available to trusted applications. We're interested in gathering feedback on how we can better integrate the library's borrower facilities into platform applications..."
While borrowers physically handle items, they actually 'consume' works, so the borrower record's interaction with the work record is key. If Talis can deliver on borrower info - like they have with Aquabrowser re works info - we could have a very powerful set of tools to offer our customers.
All I can say at this stage is fair play to Talis. Aquabrowser is simply brilliant. Everyone here who's seen and used it is mad about it, and we want to start using it straight away. But what’ll it cost when the trial is over? That’s another question…