Given that I sometimes give III a bit of a hard time (which I think is part of our job as users) — I thought I would note some of the very cool things that are out in the 2006 general release:
- RightResults(tm): III’s new relevance ranking algorthem. I’d talked about this earlier — but this is very cool. Actually getting your results back in some kindof useable order — what a concept.
- Spelling Suggestions: This was very well done. They took the basic spell checking format and then enhanced it allowing for multiple suggestions and combinations of suggestions.
- Web Edit: This is a web-based cataloging client. Its basically a poor man’s Connexion — but for what it does within the catalog and the potential areas of use — this is a pretty nifty new product.
- RSS (input and output): For free, III will include an RSS reader in the new WebPac. For a fee, you can purchase a new product called Feed Builder to create newbook lists, etc. I’m not too thrilled that this is a fee-based product, but the fact that they have finally got this working is great.
- User Reviews: Users can now put reviews on books (in addition to ratings (from 2005))
- Research Pro updates: Metafind has been renamed and improved. They still are licensing the software/connectors from Muse Global — but they have done some development that has made their software better and allowed users a bit more flexibility in how the interface is developed.
- WebPAC Pro — this is the new webpac platform
III has released a number of other new features and enhancements — but these have been the one’s that caught my eye (and that I’m remember off the top of my head). I have been pretty impressed by some of the ILS improvements that they have pushed out this time around.
–tr