4:15 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Get some lessons learned about catalog design from the Hennepin County Library, which recently created a catalog from nothing. Find out how it found the right words and placement for features and got a catalog design up and running (including an “All” search with features from dropping in an ISBN or other identifier to calculating title pop- ularity with its “best match” default sort). Topics include new search workflow, making a very useful single search box, the never-quite-right add to list tool, what data is really useful on search results, what limiting options are most important, and more. Spalding discusses developing a library catalog starting from a social network and explores how LibraryThing developed a new product, ThingCat, an OPAC layer for libraries with small collections (up to 10,000 books). Starting with the notion that it would just remove all the community data and cross-user linking, the library ended up rethinking and reimagining the OPAC from the “sky down,” grappling afresh with just what a library catalog is “for.” Hear what happens when you do the opposite of what BiblioCommons did—you add the OPAC to a social site, not the social to an OPAC.
