I have googled national libraries and picked some arbitrarily.
Without refining my search, I have searched for "OPAC design" in the OPAC of the respective library.
What did I find? Well, nothing at the
DDB. At the
British Library just as little. The next national library is only a click away, therefore I rush over to Scotland.
The National Library of Scotland offers 9951 hits sorted after relevance.
- Hit 1: Electronic Systems and software, 2003
- Hit 2: Energy engineer, 2003
- Hit 3: IEE proceedings. Control theory and application, 1994
- Hit 4: OPAC-Kolloqium [...] [...], 1991
At first I cannot recognize a relevance. The first three titles go not at all in the direction of what I have hoped for.
The Library of Congress online Catalog offers 9976 hits.
- International Conference on parallel computing..., 2004
- International Interconnect Technology Conference, 2004
- IEEE rots International symposium on Defect and Tolerance into vlsi Systems, 2003
well...
The
National Library of Sweden has apparently nothing on this topic.
A search at the
The European Library brings the Eurovision Song Contest to mind. Finland zéro points. Italy zéro points. The Netherlands troi points. France 1169 hit. 1169 hits?
What are those search results the
Catalogue de la Bibliothèque national de France has to offer on "OPAC design"?
- Designs for villa and other rural buildings, by Edmund Aikin,... of engraved on 31 plates, with project and, explanation,...
- Design of Chinese buildings, furniture, dress, machines and utensil, engraved by, Thely best Hands, from The original drawn in China by Mr. Chambers,...
- A designs for plentie by to university verse space planting of fruittrees...
... and so on.
Google Book Search (Beta) to the rescue
As a start a corresponding search delivers 10 books. This is a sufficient but easily comprehensible number. The hit list:
- The Lcsh Century: One Hundred Years with the Library of Congress Subject Headings System
Page 74 - OPAC design efforts were not concentrating on subject access even though...
- Internet Searching and Indexing: The Subject Approach
Page 181 - GENERAL OPAC DESIGN 1.1 Is a text-based interface also offered?...
- Managing Technical Services in the 90's
Page 110 - Many problems are due to the lack of standardization in general OPAC design.
Certainly searching command structures differ in the various systems, ...
- Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science
Page 2218 - Various approaches to improving the OPAC design for subject searching have been
proposed and are reviewed in this article. The trend toward Web-based OPAC ...
And so on. These are results I had hoped for. Each with a picture of the book cover and a short abstract with the bolded search term within. And only one click further one can allready start reading the book.
But is the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science really not available in the DDB? I return and search for "Encyclopedia of Library and information Science". Strike! There it is.
And how about "The Lcsh Century: One Hundred Years with the Library of Congress Subject Headings System" at the British Library? Gotcha!
So, does the user have to be able to dig or does a library have to be able to present? The next library is only a click away, and in case of any doubt it may be the search engine of your choice.
I have googled national libraries and picked some arbitrarily.
Without refining my search, I have searched for "OPAC design" in the OPAC of the respective library.
What did I find? Well, nothing at the DDB. At the British Library just as little. The next national library is only a click away, therefore I rush over to Scotland. The National Library of Scotland offers 9951 hits sorted after relevance.
But is the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science really not available in the DDB? I return and search for "Encyclopedia of Library and information Science". Strike! There it is.
And how about "The Lcsh Century: One Hundred Years with the Library of Congress Subject Headings System" at the British Library? Gotcha!
So, does the user have to be able to dig or does a library have to be able to present? The next library is only a click away, and in case of any doubt it may be the search engine of your choice.
