the discovery landscape and the OPAC

Overdue Ideas conference-blogs from IGeLU2006 - 1st International Group of ExLibris Users Conference.

Libraries, OPACs and a changing discovery landscape I

Karen [Calhoun of Cornell and the LoC report] says we should be thinking of linking systems rather than building, and decoupling discovery and 'inventory management' systems.

The challenge for a library such as the one I work at (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/information-services/library) is that we may not be able to afford appropriate discovery systems, and so perhaps need to essentially out-source this effort - if Google or someone else can provide the discovery tools, that's fine, as long as we can link into this (e.g. by the OpenURL).

The longer term vision Karen outlines is:

Switch users from where they find things to libraryr managed collections of all kings
Local catalog one link in a chain of services, one respository managed by the library
More coherent and comprehensive scholarly information systems, perhaps by discipline
Infastructure to permit global discovery and delivery of information among open, looslely coupled systems
Critical mass of digitized publications
[missed one point here]

So, I agree with Karen's point - that 'discovery' will take place on the open web, and libraries should focus on delivery, linking into the discovery tools that are 'out there'.

It took me quite a while at the library before I understood the difference between the catalogue (good inventory system) and the OPAC/WebOPAC (an interface for librarians that never should have been used as a general public interface) - why the webopac should be nopac.