Nova Scotia Barristers' Society Migrates to VuFind Discovery Interface

Published Aug 26, 2015

Andornot was pleased to help Nova Scotia Barristers' Society Library & Information Services migrate several of their web-based library search interfaces to the VuFind discovery interface this summer.

The NSBS Library has used Inmagic DB/TextWorks for many years to manage a variety of databases, including a library catalogue. Inmagic WebPublisher was previously used to search some of those, and remains available for a few other databases, but now a new VuFind interface provides a single search across:

texts, case law reporters, legislation, forms & precedents collections, and other print material;
online resources licensed for in-library use; and
continuing professional development papers in full-text.

The new catalogue is available at https://catalogue.nsbs.org

Features such as spelling corrections and search suggestions, relevancy ranked results (with more recent items boosted higher in results), and facets to narrow searches provide the features users expect in a web search application.

The design of the new VuFind site was customized to match as closely as possible the main Society website, for a seamless transition between the two. The site adapts to the user's browser, so it's just as usable on a tablet or phone as in a desktop browser.

The initial response from library users has been very positive.

"I've spoken to quite a few library users who've tried it and are really pleased. Find it really user-friendly. We have gotten emails from lawyers who have clearly discovered an interesting sounding resource via the catalogue and want to know more (is it in-library use only or can they borrow...). Some lawyers also got on board right away with signing up for a user account so that they could use the results management tools, like sending selected results as an email list to us, asking if resources are available." – Deborah Copeman, Librarian, NSBS

The NSBS Library joins a growing number of specialized libraries adopting discovery interfaces to search their collections. While public and academic libraries have offered this more modern style of search to their users for many years, smaller libraries are now able to join them with systems such as VuFind and our own Andornot Discovery Interface.