The OPAC: In What Age?
There’s a recent article over at WeBreakStuff regarding the various ages of finding information online. The ages are:
- Directory/Browse
- Search
- Subscribe (current age for many)
- The future (present+tomorrow)
Each age is an answer to information overload. As more and more information is added, new solutions to find what you want must be found. We’re seeing a lot of experimentation right now in these fields (tagging, social browsing, etc).
Currently I think many OPACs are stuck between the first and second age. The search doesn’t seem much better than the browse. If you were great at cataloging/classification they might be near equal. This is changing and pieces of the other ages are being incorporated at the same time which I think can add even more complexity to the issue. FRBR tackles some of these issues.
Regardless, the OPAC (or library catalog) is increasingly becoming only one minor source of information. As more and more holdings are added outside of the catalog this information overload will become increasingly a problem. “Metasearching” the catalog along with 30 databases and other sources are going to give searchers more information than some can handle. How to return the best results in the best way possible I think will come under discussion more and more.
Filtering, as one of the commenters of the article pointed out, may become a highly needed feature. The A9 interface gives the very beginnings of this as you can choose where to search but doesn’t scale well over two or three sources.
Another option is a service such as Rollyo, where users get to choose their sources. Instead of just “research guides” could we have topic-centric metasearches preset so patrons search the most relavent databases, journals, sites and perhaps even subsect of the OPAC? Having the ability to create their own “search rolls” could come in handy for those doing constant research in certain fields. Limiting searches by subject is nice but having the ability to really drill down on sources would be a boon.
So what age do you think ILS/OPACs are in? What do you think is the best way to help people find and keep up on what they’re looking for?
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