Online Catalogs

This post is extracted from an article written by Marshall Breeding in the May 2009 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter.

Marshall Breeding writes that OCLC's announcement of its new library automation services "stands as a large milestone in the evolution of library automation."  Here is an early view of his June Smart Libraries Newsletter article. Read More »

Hot on the heels of the launch of the D.C. Public Library's iPhone application, WorldCat Mobile is now giving users access to over 10,000 libraries in the palm of their hands. Read More »

The Darien Library’s new website and SOPAC 2.0 have been live for just over a week, during which time we staffers have had a chance to reflect on our wonderful new online presence. John Blyberg offers a thorough explanation of the technical details at his blog. The impact of SOPAC on the larger library world has been under exploration by much of the biblioblogosphere. Behind the scenes, it's been just as exciting.

The transition to a new website can be a major undertaking for any library. Even if your previous website is terrible, staff are used to it. Like a family trying to sell their house, librarians and webmasters don’t see their own clutter, poor layouts or lousy artwork. However, like a new house, a new site is an opportunity to start fresh, to pick new paint and claim a new room to set up just the way you like.

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Incorporating social software into libraries and the idea that the OPAC just may suck, have been discussed at length on this blog by various authors. Incorporating Web 2.0 ideas or technologies into your library's web page may be difficult for many reasons. If you are a school librarian, your obstacles increase exponentially. Many of the innovations available to other libraries are not accessible to school libraries.

There is a new tool, a multi-use platform really, that has been built by a small team in Rochester, New York which has the potential to greatly impact school libraries and their ability to implement social tools into their OPACs and websites. I wanted to share the project, called Fish4Info, with others. The leader of the team that created the program is Christopher Harris.
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(If you're at ALA Annual Conference/>/> while you're reading this, the RDA Update Forum is Saturday, June 23, 4:00-5:30 at WCC 206.)
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For better or worse, I'm usually quite prolix on TechSource, but this is a day when I woke up early feeling the need for a wee happy post. It's a day when I flung open the curtains and shouted to the world, "World, the OPAC doesn't always have to suck!"

That's particularly true because of the work of Casey Bisson, inventor/developer/creator/instigator/leader of WPOPAC, built "inside the framework of WordPress, the hugely popular blog-management application."
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Remember Maslow's hierarchy? At the bottom of the pyramid were the most basic needs… at the top, self-actualization. In between were concepts such as self-esteem, respect, family, and security.
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LibraryLand has seen much excitement since the ALA TechSource blog launched a little over a year ago. As much as Library 2.0 turns me on—Skype me, baby, 8 to the bar!—the trend that makes my heart go pitter-pat is a more subtle water-on-stone metamorphosis, one in which long-held perceptions and attitudes are changing, souls are becoming emboldened, and librarians push forward with new ideas. It's a trend loosely called "NGC," for NextGenCatalog, which does not refer to Land's-End mail-order shopping for college students, but is the set of future services we as a profession will provide for information discovery.
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Every day companies are coming out with new tools to reach their users on the Web. Many companies have learned that rolling out products before they are completely formed—in beta or even in alpha mode—can save them development time and money. By giving their customers an early look at a product, companies are empowering customers to use the tool in new ways and are providing them with an opportunity to ask the company for functionality that product developers may never have considered.

Companies in Beta
Meebo, a robust, widely used instant-messaging (IM) service is still in an alpha phase. Meebo allows users to sign into more than one IM account with more than one IM provider at the same time, so all of a user's accounts appear together on the same screen. For people in restrictive IT environments, there are no downloads when using Meebo.
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In my two (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) earlier pieces on this topic, I focused very narrowly on some fairly obvious limitations with online catalogs, limiting my discussion to weaknesses in OPAC searching from the user's point of view.

There are other issues with online catalogs much bigger and more problematic than search results—problems that can't be addressed by improving relevance ranking or adding spell-check (however valuable those features are to OPACs).

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