Tagging in… VuFind
Posted on: November 28, 2009
VuFind is a library resource portal developed by Villanova University; its tagline is “The library OPAC meets Web 2.0!” VuFind is “designed to make the OPAC a friendly place for patrons who are familiar with Google or Amazon” (see introductory video here). It runs on an open source search engine called Solr Energy and is free through an open source license.
Some of VuFind’s features include thumbnails of book covers; the ability to attach ratings, comments, and tags to resources; an SMS service that allows you to text call numbers to your mobile; incorporation of reviews from Amazon.com so that users don’t have to leave the page to view this content; links to Wikipedia articles about authors; links to Delicious to share records with others; and tools to make citation-tracking easy to do.
VuFind’s creators made the software open source to encourage others to create new modules, add widgets, and other customizations to make the software better.
Besides Villanova University, who developed the software, VuFind has also been implemented at Wake Forest University, University of Michigan, National Library of Ireland, London School of Economics, and York University. I will compare the records for David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous in the Villanova and Wake Forest implementations.
Case #1: VuFind at Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library
As mentioned earlier, VuFind was developed at Villanova University. VuFind is accessed through the search box on the library’s homepage, under the drop-down, “Catalog.” Searching for “everything is miscellaneous” brings up 3446 results, ranked by relevancy.
Results Page in VuFind at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library
David Weinberger’s book shows up as the first result, with a thumbnail of its signature blue cover (hardback version), the title, author, call number, location, and availability. It also displays the format of the item (e.g. book, online, microform, journal, etc.) To the right of this information, there is a small heart icon labeled “Add to favorites.” This already gives a glimpse into the Web 2.0 features of VuFind, allowing the user to tag metadata related to how he/she likes the book. There’s also a small widget at the bottom of the screen that appears occasionally for an “Ask a Librarian” chat service. (I haven’t figured out exactly when this widget appears or what makes it appear.)
Clicking into the record reveals the other Web 2.0 features. Across the top of the record are links to “Cite this,” “Text this,” “E-mail this,” “Export Record,” and “Add to favorites.” Towards the bottom there is a place to add tags (no tags have yet been contributed) and add comments; there are also reviews imported from Choice Review and Publisher’s Weekly. Overall, it looks very user-friendly and I think people familiar with Amazon would find VuFind easy to interact with. However, it looks like many records are untouched by user contributions; many don’t have any tags or comments (you can do a search by tags; I searched for the tag “history” and only 36 results came up). I wonder how the library could go about encouraging or increasing this activity. Maybe most users just don’t know about the features of this new, improved catalog? (And I wonder at what point we’ll stop calling this a “catalog” search and just call it a restricted search engine, or a database… or some other term that has fewer outdated connotations. I recall one of my previous workplaces used the word “portal.”)
Record page in VuFind at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library
Case #2: VuFind at Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library
On the homepage of Reynolds Library’s website, there is a very tiny search box in the upper right-hand corner, with a drop-down menu to select from; you can choose to search “this site,” “the catalog,” “databases,” “journals,” or “videos.” To get to VuFind, I conducted the same search as above in “the catalog.”
Pulling up the record for Weinberger’s book, the layout is slightly different but the content is mostly identical.
Record Page in VuFind at Wake Forest University's Reynolds Library
A right-hand sidebar contains the “Cite this,” “Text this,” etc. features with some different icons. The reviews are slightly different; one from Library Journal is included here. The situation with tags and comments is the same; no one has yet contributed either. I’d be interested to know who is tagging and commenting and what motivates them to do so. I’d especially be interested in users who are already active on Amazon.com, and whether they are more likely to participate in these Web 2.0 features.
Library Tagging 
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