As discussed on the Infomancy blog, FISH was their response to the problems inherent in the current state of the OPAC (Online Public-Access Catalog). And their response? FISH (Free (as in kittens) Integrated Search Handler).
What’s the difference? Read their post, they explain it well. But you can also try it yourself.
As a note, I wonder when they made the decision that no current OPAC technology suited their needs? Evergreen is quite progressive in its approach, and I would need to really dig into each of their methods to discern how they are different. It isn’t a contest, however, and it is great to see the variety of access search tools in development.
Interesting, however, that all the best tools seem to be coming from groups other than the major vendors….
from Catalogablog
Hello,
I can try to clarify some of the differences. More will come out on Infomancy early next week with a blog interview of our lead coder for the project. Evergreen is very progressive, and we have been following it for a number of years. Evergreen is, however, designed more as an ILS. It packs in features that are requried for large public and academic libraries, but which will never be used in our small school libraries.
Additionally, Evergreen’s OPAC is an OPAC designed to work with Evergreen’s circulation and cataloging modules. FISH is (as we are calling it) an integrated search handler with the focus on integration with many possiblities from a library collection to websites to our digital video servers. The other key part is that we are using a content management system to handle the results so we can include reviews, tagging, rating, and much more…but independant from any cataloging records. These are all brought together only on the final display for each resource. This makes it faster and more customizable.
We would love to hear more feedback!