FAQ

XC doesn’t have a direct parallel with other commercial or open source systems that are now available, which can make it a bit hard to categorize. XC isn’t an Integrated Library System, in that it will not contain the staff modules that are part of an ILS (i.e. Acquisitions, Cataloging, Circulation). Instead, XC will work alongside a variety of both commercial and open source Integrated Library Systems ( Voyager, Aleph, III, Evergreen and Koha) to provide additional discovery environments. XC will also provide a metadata management platform for enabling metadata from a variety of schemas to work effectively in a variety of user environments. This functionality isn’t the same as an ILS Cataloging Module, however, in that it is focused on processing batches of metadata, rather than on facilitating the creation or editing of an individual metadata record. While XC’s discovery environments include some circulation-related functionality, this is designed to allow users to request or recall an item by accessing data from the library’s ILS, rather than replicating a full ILS circulation module. Open-source ILSs like Evergreen and Koha will integrate with XC to offer features such as metadata enhancement and additional user interface options.

We’re working to accomplish some of the same goals as VUFind and Blacklight, but XC incorporates a modular, standards-based architecture and integrates with a wider range of user interface platforms. In addition to providing discovery tools similar to VUFind and Blacklight, XC’s Metadata Services Toolkit provides services for metadata normalization, aggregation and enrichment, making it possible for libraries to use XC to prepare metadata for use in a variety of user environments, both commercial and open source. XC’s applications support variety of metadata schemas, and facilitate the sharing of metadata among libraries.

Beyond sharing metadata, the XC platform will allow libraries to develop and then share custom user interface features with other libraries. XC customization options go way beyond the ability to change colors and graphics, or even layout. With XC, you can both customize the out-of-the-box user interface and add to the functionality of your website. XC offers a platform that fully integrates the online catalog with the library website. We think of XC as providing the next logical step in library software after current self-contained discovery tools, to work in a more open web environment.

OCLC’s WorldCat Local can provide many attractive features for libraries, but it lacks the ability for libraries to customize their web presence for their own unique users. XC is an excellent complement to WorldCat Local for allowing for such local customizations to serve a particular group of users. We are “lowering the bar” by making basic customization of XC as easy as possible, and by making more ambitious customization possible for libraries that might otherwise not consider attempting it. Our goal is to provide a seamless interface between XC and WorldCat Local, and we’ve been talking with OCLC about ways to enable this.

First some definitions:

Silos are all of the starting points library users are expected to be aware of when they try to use a library web presence to find library resources. These can include the library catalog, subscription databases, the library website search engine, and Google.

Metasearch is a technology that sends a user’s query off to multiple databases and catalogs and then collects and presents the results in a single interface. Behind the scenes, this all happens after the user has submitted their query in the search interface. There are many issues with this approach. Often the user interface seems sluggish, and the connections to the various databases and catalogs can break, leading to inconsistent and incomplete result sets. The databases and catalogs use a variety of metadata schemas, indexes, and algorithms, and the metasearch engine must make often arbitrary decisions about how to aggregate, and order the search results.

XC does not use metasearch technology. XC uses a series of services to collect metadata, normalize it into a common format, enhance existing relationships, refine it into FRBR levels, and then construct a single efficient interface that provides precise and comprehensive searches. Search performance and results ranking issues can now be overcome with the XC architecture.

We are excited about the prospect of exposing users to licensed database content in XC search results. We are currently seeking additional partnerships with vendors to do just that.

We have indeed been talking about XC for a couple of years. The XC Project has had two funding phases, both funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Our first phase was a “planning phase” where we gathered information and developed a project plan – this is similar to the OLE Project’s initial project phase. Our funding to begin writing software did not begin until 2008, and our team was not fully in place until summer 2008. We are now about half way through this current funding period and, as of December 1st 2008, we have 7 FTE developers writing software for XC and working with colleagues at our partner institutions. Now that our team is fully up and running, we are making rapid progress.  A portion of the XC software is already released and available.  All of the source code under development is also available.  See our Software section for more information.

Two of the five applications that make up XC are currenly available in a released state.  However, all of the source code that has been released or that is in development is currently available at either Google Code or the Drupal.org site.  Visit our software section for more information.  We want to do everything that we can to encourage developers’ interest in XC! It is essential for the future viability of the software to have an active, committed developer community, so if you are a developer and are interested in XC, we encourage you to contact us. We’d love to hear what you would like to do with the code, and to answer your questions.

There are five applications that make up the eXtensible Catalog software suite.  Two of these applications have been released, but all of the code that is under development is publicly available.  Visit the software section of this site for access information.  We will continue to release additional toolkits and new versions of software throughout 2009.