10. Greater ownership and buy-in

Metasearch is a hot topic in libraries today, but still controversial. In some corners, it has been met with skepticism and even outright resistance. And not without reason: Metasearch systems are still immature and, frankly, rather clunky. Typically, vendors give libraries little or no means to improve the out-of-the-box interface.

The X-Server gives you complete and total control over the interface and even much of the functionality of your metasearch application. Knowing they can make real changes to the interface to address key concerns can give librarians and other stakeholders a greater sense of ownership. That’s crucial to the success of any system.

9. A growing user community

The X-Server lets you design a wholly customized interface from scratch. But you don’t have to start there. Xerxes is an open source project, with code available in .Net and PHP. You can start with that code, and then add your own or borrow from the other libraries building X-Server applications as you discover new and useful ideas.

8. Build completely unique applications

For example: Together with SFX and MARCit, two other Ex Libris products, we’re using the X-Server to drive an RSS-based table of contents alerting service .

7. Integration with other library systems

Integration is vital to academic libraries; so much so that I’m going to mention it once here and again below.

The X-Server allows you to more easily integrate other library systems into your metasearch application, including tighter integration of online reference, library and union catalogs, and one of the most heavily used of library resources, reserves.

6. A simpler design model

In customizing the regular Metalib interface, you can spend months delving into hundreds of HTML fragment files or hacking around the system with JavaScript in order to make what ultimately amount to minor interface changes; changes that will almost surely be wiped out in a future upgrade (more on that later).

If you know a thing or two about XML and web programming, however, designing an X-Server application can be very simple and straight-forward. Instead of wasting time trying to work around Metalib, you and your programmers can be making real, substantial improvements.

Change is inevitable on the Web, and organizations need to plan for it. Our Xerxes interface is simple, consisting of only five pages and some XSLT files. We will redesign it at some point. Better to only have to touch five files than 125.

5. Greater integration possibilities outside the library

Academic libraries are increasingly looking to push their content and services to where users are. Today, that may mean integration of your library systems with a campus portal, and one or more learning management systems. Tomorrow it may mean integration with a larger university repository, or the half-dozen other systems coming down the pipe.

The X-Server allows libraries to integrate metasearch services into a system of their own design. Having control over your own system gives you the flexibility to integrate that system with whatever and whomever you like. No need to wait for vendors to decide the market can bear it, or pay third parties to sell you temporary bridges.

4. Enhanced functionality

When most people think of an interface, they think about how an application looks. But the user interface encompasses the entire interaction experience between the user and the system. Using the X-Server, libraries can add or enhance the functionality of Metalib.

In Xerxes, for example, we’ve completely reworked the way users choose categories and select databases , offering a much more open and intuitive design. Xerxes is also able to pre-determine full-text and print availability for each record at the results level . We’ve also added different saving and export options, as well as a much, much faster login.

3. Completely extensible interface

Like any good web service, the X-Server simply sends back XML to your application. You can do with it as you please.

In Xerxes, for example, we offer a much more open and intuitive display of the result summary, sorting options , and paging navigation . With each result, Xerxes offers users a brief description of each record based on the abstract, the format (book, article, dissertation, etc.) of the work, key fields for specific databases, and other information that library users say they find useful.

2. Immunity to system upgrades

Each new release of Metalib, from version 1 in 2001 to the upcoming release of version 4 at the end of 2006, has brought substantial interface changes. Any customizations libraries applied in previous versions were subsequently wiped out; in many cases rendering months of work to naught. Given limited resources, academic libraries can ill-afford to waste their time creating and re-creating interfaces from upgrade to upgrade.

The X-Server creates a layer of abstraction between the application layer (Metalib) and the presentation layer (your system). The upgrade to Metalib 4 this summer, for example, will have no impact on Xerxes at all. All of the hard work we’ve put into designing and customizing the interface will not have to be redone, ever. It’s time well spent, and allows us to invest our resources into additional improvements or integration with other systems.

1. Greater return on your investment

You’ve already spent a good amount of money on Metalib to give your library metasearch capabilities. But if you can’t get buy-in from your librarians, or your users find Metalib difficult to use, how much are you getting out of your investment?

Further, academic libraries spend 100s of thousands of dollars on collections each year. Yet, the disconnected nature of subscription databases leave many virtually unused.

If done right, the X-Serer allows you to design a more usable interface with enhanced functionality, allowing users to more easily discover and access underused library collections. It allows your developers to stop hacking and start designing; allows your librarians to stop teaching mechanics and start focusing on improving research skills.

Sound utopian? We’re already doing it now at Cal State.