Well, it seems to be happening. We are (finally) seeing a divorce between the Integrated Library System (ILS) and the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) we share with our patrons. The introduction of the new catalog at North Carolina State University powered by Endeca put the rest of us to shame. Our own vendor, Ex Libris has been planning a product called Primo since last year. Finally, a library vendor for whom I have a great deal of respect, TLC, has decided to broker both Endeca (they did this two years ago!) and a product called AquaBrowser.
While I’ve been talking about the end of the ILS as we know it, others have been acting! It is impressive to see how far they’ve come, and time for us to do our part to move this market along.