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The Future of the OPAC. or The Decline and Fall of the OPAC o r Why Your OPAC Sucks. Fall From Grace. 1980’s: Top of the World, Ma! 80% favorable rating for OPAC* Today, when college students start information search 89% Search Engine (62% Google) 2% Library website** - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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The Future of the OPACor
The Decline and Fall of the OPACor
Why Your OPAC Sucks
Fall From Grace• 1980’s: Top of the World, Ma!
80% favorable rating for OPAC*
• Today, when college students start information search89% Search Engine (62% Google)2% Library website**
• At FIU BBC Library 2005-2007 3-5% of reference computers in use display OPAC or library database
*Karen Markey. The Online Catalog: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained?, D-Lib Magazine, J/F 2007
**OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources. 2005
Why Your OPAC Sucks
• Difficult to use• Irrelevancy• Access and delivery• Information all over the
place• Solitary experience• Thoroughly unpleasant to use
Difficult to use
• Complicated• Not intuitive• Not consistent with
user needs or behaviors
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=tKvR0OC4nYc
Irrelevancy
• Results not ranked by relevance
• Catalog works if you know what you want:
Author,TitleSubject Heading (hah!)
• Keyword searching tacked on• OPAC a bastardized inventory tool
Information all over the place
• Catalog, library databases a false dichotomy• Users expect all-in-one• FIU 350 databases / 50 interfaces• Over 85% of Users prefer a metasearch
(federated)• Over 60% of librarians think a federated
search is not a proper starting point**LITA National Forum. Adventures in Federated Metasearch Technology,
2005
Access and (Non-) Delivery
• Tied to print• Not one-stop shopping• Not like the web• Not what users expect• Chasm between
searching and getting
Please, Sir, I want some more full-text articles.
Solitary experience
• Web 2.0:the Internet gets social InteractiveCollaborativeContent creationUser plays active role
• But not the OPACNo interactionUser aloneTake what you getUser passive
Unless he’s on the OPAC…
Thoroughly unpleasant to use
• Jargon filled• Merciless (spelling)• Do it our way• OPAC as librarian cliché
AuthoritativeUnfriendlyUnapproachableNo talking, laughing, or fun allowed
How it Happened
• Librarians were adapting to one paradigm shift; got blindsided by anotherJust getting automation down, when the WWW arrived
• Nature of information changedcreationaccessorganization
How information changed
Scarce; expensive to gather Large repositories Institutionally oriented Mainly print Location (Catalogs, indexes)
Abundant and cheap Access anywhere, anytime Personally oriented Multimedia
Discovery (Google, Amazon)
Industrial Age, 1833-1992 Information Age, 1993-
1.0 Catalog in a 2.0 World
• Essentially an inventory tool• Designed to locate known items• Finds things in a given, local location• Separate databases for articles, books• Steep learning curve• Obsolete, eventually disregarded and
forgotten by users
How did we librarians react?
Tech services: Business as usual
• MARC 1960’s technology• Hierarchy of knowledge
Not understoodNot used
• Descriptive, local catalogingSlowExpensiveUnderutilizedNot sustainable
No, no, meeting names go in the 711 field!
Reference: Fix the User• Web meant people could find information on their own• Gave up on OPAC as complicated• Reference Librarians had a choice
Fix the OPAC, orTeach people to use it(Information Literacy)
• We guessed wrong• Turns out they don’t need it,
and don’t want to bother• The user isn’t broke; we are
Boola boola, boola boola,boola boola,Boolean!
So, what to do?
• Ironically, users told us what they wanted in the 1980’s
Simpler subject searchingSpell checkingRelevance rankingAdd searchable content (articles, tables of
contents, etc)Make classification system easier to use
OPAC of the near future
• 2-3 years• Radical changes for OPAC
1. Easy to use2. Interactive & fun3. One Stop Shopping
Easy to use as Amazon
• If it isn’t, you have a problem• Single, ubiquitous search box• Spell checking• Relevancy ranking• Faceting• Simple, clear, no classes needed
Single, ubiquitous search box
Spell Checking
Out of 911 hits for rich people, Relevant results are at the top
Welcome to Post-Boolean searching!
Relevance
Facets mine subject headings
Interactive and fun• Library 2.0• Tags• Reviews• Readers also liked…• Embedded
ask-a-librarian• Forums• Book covers• RSS feeds• Texting call numbers• Things you can’t imagine, but your users can
TagsDanbury Public Library, with tags from Librarything.com
ReviewsPierce County Library System, using Polaris
Readers also liked…Part of Amazon’s sophisticated Reader’s Advisory
Interactive and fun (cont.)
• Tapping enormous pool of talent and goodwill• Catalog as a social animal• It’s how the Web works
DecentralizedCollaborativeBest example of pure, political anarchy
• If a website isn’t easy and fun, we go to another one
LibraryThing: Books are fun!
One stop shopping
• Integration of article databases with catalog • Users see no distinctions between catalog,
article databases, and websites• Neither should we• One simple interface for everything• Maybe can’t get all databases in catalog, but
must get some with full-text
Articles and Books Together!Ex Libris’ Primo, Vanderbilt University
The OPAC can have full-text articles!
In the year, 2525…
• if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find…
• The library is not thecenter of the information universe
• The user is!
Geocentric/Aristotelian view:The local catalog is thesun
Heliocentric/Copernican view:The local catalogis a planet (Karen Calhoun,
Being a Librarian 2006)
OPAC of the Far Future (2013?)
• OPAC a staff tool for local holdings- again• Users get to library from discovery tools like
Google, Amazon, WorldCat• Library pushes metadata
outward into those tools• Libraries focus on local,
unique content
Search globally, get it locally
Search in WorldCat
Where it is
Future of the OPAC“Within the next five years, a large number of librarieswill no longer have local OPACS.Instead, we will have entered a new age of data consolidation(either shared catalogs or catalogs that are integrated intodiscovery tools), both of our catalogs and our collections. TheERM system and the ILS will be one and discovery will beoutsourced.”
Taiga Forum Provocative StatementsMarch 10, 2006
Finally, Don’t Panic
• The formats of today will soon be obsolete• ‘You are not a format.
You are a service”.*• Librarians have skills, training
and minds peculiarly fitted to the Information Age• Enjoy the change!
*The User is Not Broken, K. G. Schneider, 2006
Robotic Librarians? Probably not.For awhile, anyway.