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@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
