tHe Next GeNerAtioN liBrArY cAtAloG | YANG AND HoFMANN 141

Sharon Q. Yang and Melissa A. Hofmann

The Next Generation Library Catalog: A Comparative Study of the OPACs of Koha, Evergreen, and Voyager

Open source has been the center of attention in the library world for the past several years. Koha and Evergreen are the two major open-source integrated library sys-tems (ILSs), and they continue to grow in maturity and popularity. The question remains as to how much we have achieved in open-source development toward the next-generation catalog compared to commercial systems. Little has been written in the library literature to answer this question. This paper intends to answer this question by comparing the next-generation features of the OPACs of two open-source ILSs (Koha and Evergreen) and one proprietary ILS (Voyager’s WebVoyage).

M uch discussion has occurred lately on the next-generationlibrarycatalog,sometimesreferredtoastheLibrary2.0catalogor“thethirdgeneration

catalog.”1Differentandevenconflictingexpectationsexistastowhatthenext-generationlibrarycatalogcomprises:

Intwosentences,thiscatalogisnotreallyacatalogatallbutmorelikeatooldesignedtomakeiteasierforstudentstolearn,teacherstoinstruct,andscholarstodo research. It provides its intended audience with amore effective means for finding and using data andinformation.2

Suchexpectations,despitetheirvagueness,eventuallytookconcreteformin2007.3Amongthemostprominentfeatures of the next-generation catalog are a simplekeyword search box, enhanced browsing possibilities,spelling corrections, relevance ranking, faceted naviga-tion, federated search, user contribution, and enrichedcontent,justtomentionafew.Overthepastthreeyears,libraries, vendors, and open-source communities haveintensifiedtheireffortstodevelopOPACswithadvancedfeatures.Thenext-generationcatalogisbecomingthecur-rentcatalog.

The library community welcomes open-sourceintegratedlibrarysystems(ILSs)withopenarms,asevi-dencedbytheincreasingnumberoflibrariesandlibraryconsortia that have adopted or are considering open-source options, such as Koha, Evergreen, and the OpenLibrary Environment Project (OLE Project). Librarianssee a golden opportunity to add features to a systemthatwilltakeyearsforaproprietaryvendortodevelop.Open-source OPACs, especially that of Koha, seem tobe more innovative than their long-established propri-etary counterparts, as our investigation shows in thispaper.Threatenedbythisphenomenon,ILSvendorshaverushedtoimprovetheirOPACs,modelingthemafterthenext-generation catalog. For example, Ex Libris pushed

outitsnewOPAC,WebVoyage7.0, inAugustof2008togiveitsOPACamoderntouch.

One interesting question remains. In a competitionfor a modernized OPAC, which OPAC is closest to ourvisions for the next-generation library catalog: open-sourceorproprietary?Thecomparativestudydescribedinthisarticlewasconductedinthehopeofyieldingsomeinformation on this topic. For libraries facing optionsbetween open-source and proprietary systems, “a thor-oughprocessofevaluatingan integrated librarysystem(ILS)todaywouldnotbecompletewithoutalsoweighingthe open source ILS products against their proprietarycounterparts.”3

■■ Scope and Purpose of the Study

ThepurposeofthestudyistodeterminewhichOPACofthe three ILSs—Koha, Evergreen, or WebVoyage—offersmore in terms of services and is more comparable tothe next-generation library catalog. The three systemsincludetwoopen-sourceandoneproprietaryILSs.Kohaand Evergreen are chosen because they are the twomost popular and fully developed open-source ILSs inNorthAmerica.At the time of the study, Koha had 936implementations worldwide; Evergreen had 543 libraryusers.4 We chose WebVoyage for comparison because itistheOPACoftheVoyagerILSbyExLibris,thebiggestILS vendor in terms of personnel and marketplace.5 Italso is one of the more popular ILSs in NorthAmerica,withacustomerbaseof1,424libraries,mostofwhichareacademic.6 As the sample only includes three ILSs, thestudy is very limited in scope, and the findings cannotbeextrapolated toallopen-sourceandproprietarycata-logs. But, hopefully, readers will gain some insight intohow much progress libraries, vendors, and open-sourcecommunities have achieved toward the next-generationcatalog.

■■ Literature Review

A review of the library literature found two relevantstudiesonthecomparisonofOPACsinrecentyears.Thefirst study was conducted by two librarians in Sloveniainvestigating how much progress libraries had madetoward the next-generation catalog.7 Six online catalogs

sharon Q. Yang (yangs@rider.edu) is Systems librarian and Melissa A. Hofmann (mhofmann@rider.edu) is Bibliographic Control librarian, rider university.