Wednesday, July 05, 2006

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


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


ALA TechSource


Maison Bisson


Library Garden


Disruptive Library Technology Jester


Lis.dom


What I Learned Today


Librarian.net


Science Library Pad


Confessions of a Science Librarian


ex libris


Swem Review of Technology


Librarian 1.5


ebyblog


Library Laws are meant to be broken


Participation Literacy


LawLibTech


Crossed Wires


Library clips


Librarian in the Middle


The Goblin in the Library


Panlibus


ACRLog


Free Range Librarian


Information Wants to Be Free


Affording the Rock-N-Roll Lifestyle


Catalogablog


OPAChyderm


LibDev


Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog


LibraryCrunch


Walt at random


TechEssence.Info


Pegasus Librarian


One Big Library


My posts


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).

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