Villanova’s VuFind OPAC Replacement Wins $50,000 Mellon Award
Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 1/12/2009
- Open source interface incorporates modular design and popular user features
- HathiTrust to implement “temporary public beta using VuFind"
- Full release tentatively scheduled for Q1 2009
| Go back to the Academic Newswire for more stories |
Villanova University’s VuFind project, described as "a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries," in December won a $50,000 Award for Technology Collaboration from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
VuFind is an open source OPAC replacement created to be a comprehensive interface for all of a library’s content, including catalog records, institutional repository items, and online journal information. Many have been eagerly following the software’s development, such as LJ Digital Libraries blogger Roy Tennant who called it "a 'next-gen' catalog system to watch, if not actively inspect." Moreover, a recent announcement from the HathiTrust described a “temporary public beta using VuFind, to be deployed [in] early 2009.” This in addition to the recognition of the Mellon award has solidified its position among the most promising discovery layers currently available to academic libraries.
The specific application of the $50,000 award has yet to be determined, said Andrew Nagy, VuFind’s lead developer and former technology development specialist at Villanova’s Falvey Memorial Library (he could not yet disclose the details of his new position in time for this story). However, he told LJ that one of the largest components left to be built into the VuFind interface is an authority control mechanism, and that some of the funds will likely go towards the development of software in that area in the coming months.
VuFind is approaching the official release of version 1.0, and is currently available as a “1.0 release candidate.” The final version is tentatively scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2009, though Nagy noted that his departure from Villanova and other staff shifts may influence the exact timing of the release, though he will remain lead developer on the project. The interface has already been implemented in live production or beta stages at nine libraries, and testing in at least four more.
Modular by design
VuFind is ILS agnostic, and was designed with modularity in mind from the start. Nagy told LJ that there is no all-in-one solution for resource discovery, and that the developers aimed to give site administrators the ability to tailor the software: “if a component doesn’t fit your needs, you can take that out and replace it with a component that has a better fit,” he said.
Nagy cited the National Library of Australia (NLA) as an example, the first catalog outside of Villanova to adopt the software. The NLA developed a prototype catalog using the VuFind components available in late 2007, and then further invested in custom development to take care of item requests via the VuFind interface and format-specific search limits.
Feature focused
Much of VuFind's appeal lies in the number of user-focused access and discovery features such as faceted navigation for search results, “more like this” suggestions, user lists for saving records, and compatibility with the open source Zotero bibliographic citation manager.
VuFind can also pull in biographical information from Wikipedia to give context to author searches in the catalog, and can display book reviews from services like Amazon and Syndetic Solutions on individual item records.
To do the heavy lifting in terms of indexing and records display, VuFind relies on another set of open source technologies widely popular with library and web developers called Apache Lucene and its Solr front end. The Lucene software builds the search index of the institution’s records and electronic content, which in turn feeds the Solr search interface that provides options like faceted browsing and text highlighting in search results.
Others recognized by Mellon tech awards
The Mellon committee also recognized the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign this year, awarding it $100,000 for the development of Archon, “the simple archival information system.” The software is designed to help archivists publish “archival descriptive information and digital archival objects” online and generate EAD and MARC records, according to the project’s site. Archon, like VuFind, is an open source project made freely available to libraries, released under the University of Illinois/National Center for Supercomputing Applications Open Source License.
The Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration began in 2006, and that year awarded Plymouth State University (NH) $50,000 for the creation of WPOPAC (now known as Scriblio), an open source OPAC project built on the popular WordPress CMS and blogging tool, spearheaded by LJ Mover & Shaker Casey Bisson. In 2007, the Georgia Public Library Service of the University System of Georgia won $50,000 for work on the Evergreen open source ILS.
Read more Newswire stories:
California Budget Deficit Means Cuts at CSU, Freeze on Library Projects
SAGE: Society Publishing Survey Shows Open Access Winning Support
In Responses to Task Force on Electronic Member Participation, Dismay About Midwinter
People
