Apologies for cross-posting
News from the Library of Congress
Cataloger’s Desktop “3.0” Now in Development
Cataloger’s Desktop-the Library of Congress’s integrated, online
documentation service with the most important cataloging and metadata
resources-is now undergoing major modernization. The result will be
“Desktop 3.0”: a significantly enhanced bibliographic web-based
toolbox targeted for release to subscribers mid-year 2009.
Desktop 3.0 will operate with FAST Search & Transfer’s ESP platform,
which greatly expands the types of searching and information discovery
techniques used by the product. For more details about FAST Search &
Transfer’s ESP platform, visit
http://www.fastsearch.com/l3a.aspx?m=1031. InfoSolutions, the
Crestview Hills, Kentucky web product developer, is working with LC
staff on this project. InfoSolutions has maintained the current
Cataloger’s Desktop product for the past 5 years and they will
collaborate on the development and implementation of FAST ESP for the
Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0 product.
Updated quarterly by the Library of Congress’s Cataloging
Distribution Service, and available to users 24-7, Cataloger’s Desktop
provides access to more than 270 electronic manuals, cataloging and
classification standards, procedures, and metadata resources. Desktop
3.0 will add more new operational enhancements to the service than at
any time in the past.
Major Enhancements
Desktop 3.0 will incorporate the most up-to-date searching and
navigation capabilities, including: fuzzy matching, finding/excluding
similar resources, dynamic drill-downs, contextual analysis, search
relevancy, remembering search histories, query federation, searching
across Desktop’s content and a user’s own PC content as well, and a
search engine that can adapt to a user’s search behavior.
New work environment and interface enhancements will include a
subscriber- customizable interface, intuitive resource organization,
visual clues and icons to help users conceptualize the nature of a
resource and see how it interrelates with other resources, RSS feeds
from the Library of Congress and other sources, easy linking or
incorporating Desktop to subscribers’ cataloging applications,
drag-and-drop shortcuts, pages built on-the-fly based on result sets,
and automatic alerts to changes in Desktop’s resources.
Data enhancements will include searching of approximately 30 database
resources (such as LC’s Online Cataloging and Authorities service)
currently linked to Desktop. This will enable users to execute a single
search that will query Desktop’s content as well as the content in all
of the database resources. Also, RSS feeds will be included for both
resources incorporated in the product and those only cited.
“As search and navigation technologies rapidly evolve,” said Bruce
Johnson, Cataloger’s Desktop product manager, “it is essential that
Cataloger’s Desktop take advantage of these new capabilities. Desktop
3.0 will put subscribers in the driver’s seat.” In coming months,
the Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0 Development Team will ask for testers,
although it is too early now to take volunteers. Direct questions to
Bruce Johnson at bjoh_at_loc.gov.
For more information on this project, visit
www.loc.gov/cds/notices/desktop09.pdf . A free trial of Cataloger’s
Desktop is available by visiting www.loc.gov/cds/desktop
Library of Congress — Cataloging Distribution Service
Washington DC 20541-4912 USA — Email: cdsinfo_at_loc.gov
Phone: (202) 707-6100 — Fax: (202) 707-1334 —
http://www.loc.gov/cds/
Received on Thu Feb 19 2009 - 08:27:42 EST