The Future of the OPAC: Integrating the OPAC with Emerging Discovery Tools

Abstract

This presentation will explore how the library catalogue, a tool with a long and distinguished history, is changing with the advent of the Internet. We, as library practitioners, know the power of the catalog to find information sources in library collections. But our users, who have become used to having some results regardless of what search terms they enter into Web search engines, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the current OPAC technologies. What are some of limitations of online library catalogues and in what ways are members of the information community and library automation vendors discovering ways of making local resources more available to our users? Information will be presented about recent studies of user behaviour as well as some commercial solutions to the problem of user/catalog interface.