Introduction

I’m Karen Boehning, the Technology Coordinator at the Winnefox Library System. We’re headquartered in Oshkosh at the Oshkosh Public Library. Winnefox provides technology support and runs an ILS for its 30 member libraries in five counties. The ILS is SirsiDynix Symphony. The catalog is Web2, a product developed by DRA before its purchase by SirsiDynix. Web2 is highly customizable via html and has provided us with more flexibility than is possible with other SirsiDynix catalog interfaces.

I am interested in the direction of catalog development, including faceted searching and federated searching. Two studies we have done on catalog searching shows that our users do a lot of known-item searching. I have concerns about catalog development that seem to be focused on giving the user something/anything, making it harder to find specific items. This may primarily affect public libraries, but I don’t want the public-library point of view to get lost in the process by failing to participate.