OPAC Blog Posts - A List

July 11, 2206 - I am no longer updating this list of OPAC Blog posts on this site. For the most recent version of this post, please visit the OPAC Blog Posts - A List via WordPress. It has become too difficult to update the list in both places.

The latest assignment for my summer class is a 10-15 page paper about one cataloging related subject that we choose from a list of 15 suggested topics (due on July 17th). Although I haven’t made my final choice about the theme of the paper, many of the suggestions on the professor’s list deal with the automated library catalog and the user’s experience of searching. I’m interested in using some of the recent blog discussions about the OPAC/library catalog/ILS as part of my paper. As such, I’ve started putting together a list of relevant blog posts. This list is a work in progress. I intend to update the list - and start annotating it as part of my research.

LibrarianInBlack

• Karen and the Sucky OPAC - The LibrarianInBlack comments on Karen Schneider’s “How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It),” The LIB comments that ” This relevancy ranking issue is one of those changes I’d like to see happen. I agree with Karen that this is something that librarians should be demanding…not simply wishing for.”
• Library website goals - The LIB agrees about the importance of single sign on (which isn’t something that we are even close to at my small library either!!) and references John Blyberg’s post Library 2.0 websites: Where to begin?

Family Man Librarian

• Library online catalogs and relevancy ranking[updated] - A post in which the Family Man Librarian disagrees with Karen Schneiders’ post How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It). The FML takes issue with Karen’s points that most online catalogs don’t have relevance ranking and that ILS vendors are wholly to blame for this lack of relevance ranking. FML contends that we need to “look at both sides of the issue and especially do not be so quick to lay blame without truly understanding the reality of what vendors provide and what they do.”

Blyberg.net

• 2006: the year of the phoenix OPAC? - In this post, John Blyberg points to several significant developments in OPACs: NCSU’s new online catalog, Casey Bisson’s WordPress OPAC project, Ed Vielmetti’s third-party library apps with RSS feeds and Dave Pattern’s work with a new patron-oriented presentation layer to the OPAC. Blyberg’s own experiences also lead him to conclude that the public is “hungry” for social additives to the catalog. Blyberg writes that 2006 “is shaping up to be the year a new OPAC vision is created.”
• ILS Customer Bill of Rights - John Blyberg details “four simple, but fundamental” needs from ILS vendors: 1) Open, read-only, direct access to the database, 2)A full-blown, W3C standards-based API to all read-write functions, 3)The option to run the ILS on hardware of our choice, on servers that we administer and 4) High security standards.
• Library 2.0 websites: Where to begin? - John suggests five directives to help redesign library web sites: social software, open-source software, single sign-on, open standards and an integrated OPAC.
• Why bother: the impact of social OPACs - Blyberg makes is clear that he does not “think we are doomed if we choose not to implement social software in our OPAC.” He contends that by adding social software and/or applications we can create a feeling of community within our OPACs. One key point is that “findability is not the goal, but the activity and the experience which is why I say that OPACs have the potential to be fascinating places to visit and browse.”
• OPACs in the frying pan, Vendors in the fires - A round up of blog posts about OPACs, ILS and vendors for early June 2006.

A Wandering Eyre

• Actual Reasons Why My OPAC Sucks - Jane offers 16 actual reasons why her OPAC sucks in response to an actual comment.
• OPACS (everyone together now) SUCK - Jane reflects about the the concepts of tracking and finding in relation to the OPAC and about how they are different. She suggests that these two concepts intersect at the point where we need to locate an item at a specific moment in time and that this is a good starting point for the conversation about how to make things easier to find.
• We Are Broken, Not Them - A response to Karen Schneider’s post THE USER IS NOT BROKEN: A MEME MASQUERDING AS A MANIFESTO in which Jane adds several of her own points to Karen’s.

ALA TechSource

• From Swine to Divine: NCSU Unveils New Online Catalog - by Teresa Koltzenburg
• The Revolution Will be Folksonomied - by Karen G. Schneider
• Measuring My First CIL - by Tom Peters
• How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It) - by Karen G. Schneider
• How OPACs Suck, Part 2: The Checklist of Shame - by Karen G. Schneider
• How OPACs Suck, Part 3: The Big Picture - by Karen G. Scheider

Maison Bisson

• …And Then You Realize You Wasted Your Life
• Raging Arguments About The Future of the ILS
• Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0
• WPopac: An OPAC 2.0 Testbed
• WPopac Gets Googled
• Free Markets, Bad Products, Slow Change Rates

Library Garden

• Catching Up

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

• Is the Writing on the Wall for the Integrated Library System?
• “Is the Writing on the Wall?” - Take 2

Lis.dom

• dream of the children’s materials OPAC
• across the great divide

What I Learned Today

• State of Our ILS
• Touched a Nerve

Librarian.net

• OPAC Manifesto
• my tag cloud and forcing an OPAC solution

Science Library Pad

• dear OPAC: change or die
• full text is coming . . . OPAC is going?
• academic libraries dislocated by technology

Confessions of a Science Librarian

• Your ignorance will not protect you

ex libris

• getting stuff into the opac

Swem Review of Technology

• The Catalog Under Scrutiny – Part 1, a look at the OPAC
• The Catalog Under Scrutiny - Part 2, Open Source and the ILS

Librarian 1.5

• Talis white paper on Library 2.0
• RFID, books and Library 2.0 - The Missing Link?

ebyblog

• Goal Based Information Retrieval Experiences
• The Flexible OPAC
• Plenty of Suckage to Go Around
• This Old Library
• Spamming Google with the OPAC

Library Laws are meant to be broken

• More reasons OPACs suck
• And so begins the law library OPAC discussion

Participation Literacy

• Library 2.0

LawLibTech

• How OPACs Suck, Parts 1, 2 & 3
• Enhancing Library Catalogs with Tags

Crossed Wires

• What Web Users Hate Part 1: Search and Browse
• What Web Users Hate Part 2: Scanning the Site
• What Web Users Hate Part 3: Reading

Library clips

• OPAC in a blog and library 2.0
• SLE feeds for Library OPACs

Librarian in the Middle

• TEACHING OPAC SKILLS

The Goblin in the Library

• Slouching Towards OPAC 2.0

Panlibus

• Pity the poor OPAC?
• Where is the edge of the OPAC?
• The OPAC is not an end in itself

ACRLog

• More on XC from David Lindahl

Free Range Librarian

• The user is not broken: a meme masquerading as a manifesto

Information Wants to Be Free

• Casey Bisson Speaks! We should all listen.
• Dumb down the catalog? Yes, lets!
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 1: What’s the problem?
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 2: Who are our users?
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 3: How do we measure up?
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 4: What Works?
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 5: The Unintegrated Library System & Federated Search
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 6: Link Resolvers
• The Failure of Middleware, Part 7: OAI and Google Scholar

Affording the Rock-N-Roll Lifestyle

• OPAC Laments
• OPAC Laments

Catalogablog

• OPAC
• iPod

OPAChyderm

• The cost of switching

LibDev

• ILS Architecture: Open vs Turnkey
• The OPAC: In What Age?

Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog

• Lifting out the catalog discovery experience
• Thinking about the catalog
• A service-able catalogue
• Discover, locate, … vertical and horizontal integration

LibraryCrunch

• OPAC Wishlist, Continued
• OPAC Wishlist, more
• Where’s MY OPAC browser?

Walt at random

• What’s a known item?

TechEssence.Info

• Forcing Users to Learn the Catalog - by Thomas Dowling
• Rethink the role of the library catalog - by Eric Lease Morgan

Pegasus Librarian

• Empathy, But Not Sympathy for Innovative
• Changing Nature of the Catalog
• Search Motivation and the Expert/Novice

One Big Library

• On the Clarifying of a Few Things
• The Problem with the ILS Bill of Rights

My posts

• The OPAC Strikes Back
• Additional Thoughts on the OPAC
• The OPAC Debate Continues . . .
• Are We Really Ready to Say Goodbye to the Sucky OPAC?
• The Main Reason I Think OPACs are a Problem
• The Motivation Behind the Search
• The User Isn’t Broken - But Neither is the Library
• Library Users & the Catalog

Updates:7/6/2006 - I added some additional blog posts to the list and started to annotate the entries.7/7/2006 - I continued annotating some entries. I changed the formatting of the post to (I hope) make the post easier to read (using bold for blog names and bullets for posts).