The Travelin' Librarian

CIL2007: Catalogs/OPACs for the Future

April 18, 2007 Posted by Michael

Roy Tennant, California Digital Library & Tim Spalding, LibraryThing

Tim: The Fun Opac

OPACs should have funability
“The library is the most fun you can have with your pants on”
Bring the OPAC front and center, don’t separate it from the Web site
Separate because we’re ashamed of the OPAC
Inbound links don’t go to records but to the homepage or a timeout screen
Link outwards & people will come to you
Why not link to commercial services? Your patrons are already aware of them.
No benefit from being a Mall
Link around, make everything clickable
“massive linking”
Dress up your OPAC

covers

Syndetics
Amazon.com

Free open repository of covers needs to be created

link to Wikipedia via ISBNs

Put your data out there

you’re not the only one who knows how to work with your data

librarians don’t have a monopoly on fun

Feeds

of new books
from a search
subject headings

People don’t want your content, they want their content
Blog widgets

They want to tell people what they’re reading

LibraryThing widget

What I’m reading now v. random
Random way more popular

How much money do I owe my library?

LibraryThing for Libraries

Library Thing Tage Consortium

Roy: Catalogs for the Future

Refuse to use the “O word”
what future?
Demise of the catalog at the local level
ILS still needed
New world order

discovery disaggregated form the ILS
Google
OpwnWorldCat
Metasearch
Others

[diagram slide about worldcat, openworldcat & worldcat local]
Why this makes sense

users typically want to fine everything they can on a topic

prefer to search in one place if possible
most ILSs lack cool new features

WorldCat Identities
FictionFinder
Needle Library, Hystack College

made up example
finding tool, not an OPAC

Next Gen ILS

refocused on library operations
discrete components that interoperate through rapid protocols
able to work well with other systems

Upload to other systems
expose APIs

inexpensive, scaleable, & easy maintenance

[Pines Evergreen System]

Next Gen Finding Tools

integrate access to wide variety of sources
Able to use info from other systems as well as provide it (via protocols)
offer sophisticated features

relevance
faceted browsing

not a library catalog

About Michael

Michael Sauers is currently the Technology Innovation Librarian for the Nebraska Library Commission in Lincoln, Nebraska and has been training librarians in technology for more than 15 years. He has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller. He earned his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael’s tenth book, Blogging & RSS: A Librarian’s Guide, Second Edition was published October 2010 with three more books to be published in 2012. He has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs Web sites for authors and historical societies, takes many, many photos, and reads more than 100 books a year.

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