OCLC announces a new end user service, TouchPoint
OCLC today announced they are piloting a new end user discovery service, OCLC TouchPoint.
The service promises greater accuracy for researchers with more complex discovery needs and richer insights into chosen resources. User generated content, like reviews and lists, which have been contributed to WorldCat.org, are for the first time going to be made accessible via a locally hosted solution.
TouchPoint will be piloted first with a library using the LBS system, the pilot will commence later this month.OCLC invited the University Library of the Erasmus University Rotterdam to collaborate in this pilot project. The Rotterdam University Library strives to excel in economics/management and related fields. It stands for client orientation, innovation and efficiency.
Norbert Weinberger, Head of the OCLC Management Systems portfolio said: "TouchPoint provides an end user service that can be tightly integrated within any library's management environment. Inherent to the proposition is our ability to consume network services from WorldCat and seamlessly integrate them in TouchPoint. The pilot will introduce socialisation features from WorldCat.org ensuring the interface will possess all the attributes users have come to expect of the read-write web." OCLC has three integrated library management systems: LBS, SISIS-SunRise and OLIB.
"Our library's web site is the most common point of interaction we have with our users," said Paul Soetaert, librarian of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. "The quality of that interaction will be determined by how dynamic and intuitive users deem our web site to be. We expect TouchPoint to support the highest quality relationship with our users."
TouchPoint offers a multilingual interface for all physical and electronic content held both locally as purchased content and remotely as licensed content. It will support APIs to search engines, including FAST as well as interoperating with the library's management and fulfilment systems.
TouchPoint will also include "My Library" features like database preferencing, search settings and bookmarking. Its deployability at the library or partner institution means it will provide additional customisation possibilities, like configuration of multiple views in one installation and a user interface that can be completely stylised to reflect the library's institutional branding.
