Enhanced Navigation Pilot Project:
Metalib/SFX

The MIT Libraries have long recognized the need for a way to integrate, navigate, discover, and deliver linking services in the scholarly information environment. We offer a large array of electronic resources in all subjects, but to enable our users to make full use of these resources we needed to identify a tool or tools that would go beyond the traditional OPAC interface or the numerous native search engines. We came to think of this need as an Enhanced Navigation Tool, and considered several alternative products before settling on Ex Libris' MetaLib Universal Gateway and SFX.

SFX and MetaLib are two technologies that can be used separately or together. As a Universal Gateway, MetaLib is used to perfom cross-database searches across search protocols and data formats in a variety of catalogs and indexes available on the web. In conjunction with or separate from the Universal Gateway, SFX provides contextual links to related information resources and services such as full text, ILL and OPAC holdings.

By making use of the OpenURL technology, together they provide onward navigation and discovery from records retrieved during a search in the MetaLib Universal Gateway to the "appropriate copy (full text)" or content librarians pre-select to make available to users by using SFX technology.

During FY02, a group of librarians is working together as the Enhanced Navigation Implementation Group (ENAV) to learn about and plan the implementation of these tools to unlock the potential of the MIT Libraries' electronic resources for our user community.