From Swine to Divine: NCSU Unveils New Online Catalog

By Teresa Koltzenburg | If you attended LITA's Forum in San Jose last September, you may have heard this analogy: "Making minor changes to library catalog systems is like putting lipstick on a pig."

Attributed to Andrew Pace—head of systems at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries (Raleigh),  "Technically Speaking" columunist for American Libraries (and former Smart Libraries Newsletter contributor), and award-winning librarian—by Roy Tennant on his Web4Lib electronic discussion list, the simile can no longer be applied to the NCSU Libraries' online catalog.

According to an announcement posted earlier today, NSCU Libraries will be bringin' home the bacon for its users with its brand new, "revolutionary" online catalog, powered by Endeca's technology.
    Leveraging the advanced search and Guided Navigation capabilities of the Endeca ProFind platform, the NCSU Libraries' new catalog provides the speed and flexibility of popular online search engines while capitalizing on existing catalog records. As a result, students, faculty, and researchers can now search and browse the NCSU Libraries' collection as quickly and easily as searching and browsing the Web, while taking advantage of rich content and cutting-edge capabilities that no Web search engine can match.
Users can access the catalog here.

Says Pace, "Hat's off to the lead developer, a brand new librarian, Emily Lynema. She and the nimble product implementation team put this new catalog together in less than 6 months!"

Congrats to Andrew and his NCSU Libraries' team.