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and librarians will benefit from knowing what typical and acceptable response times are in online catalogs, and this information will assist in the design and evaluation of library discovery systems. This study also looks at benchmarks in response time and defines what is unacceptable and why. When advanced features and content in library catalogs increase response time to the extent that users become disaffected and use the catalog less, NextGen catalogs represent a step backward, not forward. In August 2009, the Auraria Library launched an instance of the WorldCat Local product from OCLC, dubbed WorldCat@Auraria. The Library’s traditional catalog—named Skyline and running on the Innovative Interfaces platform—still runs concurrently with WorldCat@Auraria. Because WorldCat Local currently lacks a library circulation module that the Library was able to use, the legacy catalog is still required for its circulation functionality. In addition, Skyline contains MARC records from the SerialsSolution 360 MARC product. Since many of these records are not yet available in the OCLC WorldCat database, these records are being maintained in the legacy catalog to enable access to the Library’s extensive collection of online journals. Almost immediately upon implementation of WorldCat Local, many Library staff began to express concern about the product’s slow response time. They bemoaned its slowness both at the reference desk and during library instruction sessions. Few of the discussions of the product’s slow response time evaluated this weakness in the context of its advanced features. Several of the reference and instruction librarians even stated that they refused to use it any longer and that they were not recommending it to students and faculty. Indeed, many stated that they would only use the legacy Skyline catalog from then on. Therefore we decided to analyze the product’s response time in relation to the legacy catalog. We also decided to further our study by examining response time in library catalogs in general, including several different online catalog products from different vendors.