Faceted browsing & discovery interfaces

Many Libraries are leaving their existing Library Management System in place and concentrating on improving the user experience by adding software that adds to the bit of the system that the users care about, the catalogue interface.

The national library of australia has used an open source product VuFind, you can try it out here

The University of pittsburgh are using a product called aquabrowser to do something similar, have a look here (http://pittcatplus.pitt.edu/)

The University of East Anglia are using another commercial product called Primo to deliver the same kinds of optiosn in their catalogues, have a look here (http://broadsearch.uea.ac.uk)

Another product is Endeca, which NCSU are using, this was linked to in a previous post. There are also offerings from other companies including Sirsi Dynix ( Enterprise).

What do you think, would they make life easier for users? What functions do you like or not like about these kinds of interfaces? (http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/)