Encore Harvesting is one of the new products that we acquired during the recent renegotiation of our Sierra contract. Encore Harvesting allows our catalog, Encore, to link to files that are housed in an external digital repository – another collection images, recordings, videos, or documents– outside of our Sierra system that contain digital files that we might want to provide access to. This harvesting is accomplished through a nightly process in which Encore accesses the external databases – finds any new records and refreshes existing records if there are updates.
The digital repositories must meet certain standards – they must be OAI-PMH compliant – which includes certain protocols that make them compatible with Encore Harvesting.
To see an example of how this will look to the patrons, you can visit Poughkeepsie Public Library District’s (PPLD) digital repository, Main & Market, which contains mainly historical images.
From Encore, type Railroad Construction
The Search Results will not only present listings for traditional formats (Books, DVDs, eAudiobooks, etc) but will also provide links to Media Files.
Clicking on any of these results will take you to the full record, which will include all of the metadata that exists in Encore, (it does not actually exist in Sierra). Part of this record will include a link to the external site where the resource (photo, video, recording, document) resides.
Clicking on Media File (or a link in an Identifier field) in the record will take you to the file.