A little more than two years after I realized how (really) bad the problem was and about 18 months after I prototyped my solution, our new library website, catalog, and knowledgebase launched last week — just in time for the fall semester opening.

It’s all built on Scriblio, includes a very simple new books list that you can narrow by subject and get via RSS. And if you search for subject areas like anthropology, economics, english writing, or any of a few dozen other topics, you’ll find our librarians’ subject guides listed at or near the top to help you out. You can also use the facets, clustered metadata shown in the right sidebar that reflect the aggregated results of that search†, to easily explore the collection or find the exact resource you need.

This started out simply, but the distance from prototype to working, um, product is difficult, dangerous, and frustrating. Still, when successful, it’s also wonderfully gratifying. And none of this would have happened without the help and support of a number of friends and colleagues both inside and outside the my library (callouts: Zach, Matt, Lichen, Jessamyn, Jon, Elaine, David, Anne, Dwight, Chris, PSU, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a lot of fellow library bloggers who’ve shared stories, spread the word, and helped make magic).

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

One more thing: This site isn’t perfect, but it’s a library catalog we can fix. Tell me what’s wrong, or better yet, download the software, join the list, and let’s work on it together so we can all have a better system.

† a set of facets can show you that anthropology is related to history, sociology, and ethnology, and help you narrow any of those subjects down to field work, methodology, or study and teaching.

library, libraries, lib20, library 2.0, Plymouth State University, Lamson Library, website, launch, Scriblio, WPopac

A9, the search engine from Amazon.com, does some pretty interesting things that libraries should be aware of. First, any library considering a metasearch product should look at what can be done for free, and second, libraries should take a look at the OpenSearch technology that drives it.

So now, when searching for Harry Potter, you’ll also find relevant results from Plymouth State University’s Lamson Library. We’re not the first library — I think Seattle Public was — and my work mostly follows the cookbook written up by Ryan Eby, of Michigan State University Libraries. Thanks also go to our university IT sysadmins who installed the XSLT extension for PHP5 earlier this week.

tags: a9, lamson library, metasearch, michigan state university, opensearch, plymouth state university, ryan eby, search engine, search engines, search technology, seattle public library, university, web search, websearch, xslt