OPACs that Will Work…For Some.
January 30th, 2006Jenny Levine writes about a mock-up of a new “social-based” OPAC (but more than that), created by Casey Bisson.
Absolutely amazing stuff. Take a look at the screenshots. It has (almost) everything: comments, tagging, places for book reviews, a place for an amazon.com search, and more. This, my friends, is the two-way street is what the online catalog of the future will be, and it will be built (well, at least improved on) by developers, not vendors.
The reason why I put “for some” in the title of this post is to remind us all that many libraries won’t be able to apply this type of catalog in their libraries because they have more important social issues to deal with: slashed budgets, no computers, security (not computer networks) issues, outdated books, etc. I met many librarians at Midwinter that have other pressing issues to deal with than the latest and greatest OPAC. It’s not a sense of different strokes; it’s one of need.
