Musings on OPAC interface

In May I went to Oregon State University to be part of a panel presenting an overview of options for the OPAC. One of the other presenters, Michael Boock, had an interesting overview of "The Future of the Catalog". (http://hdl.handle.net/1957/4589). Some of his discussion echoes the study done by UC Berkeley on Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University (PDF).

Both Boock and UC call for OPACs that offer greater flexibility and control in terms of how librarians can set up these resources for their users, as well as more flexibility in the options users have for finding their information (through faceted searching and other things). Both point to the ability to support recommender features and support customization, as well as providing bibliographic services where users are, as important and necessary changes to how libraries provide service.

Good, user-based interface design has never been more crucial if we are going to convince our users that we have the tools and the know-how to remain vital information resources in their lives. More and more parts of the library world, such as the ones mentioned here, are raising the call to attend, as quickly as possible, to this pressing and urgent need.

It was very frustrating in the usability testing I did last Fall to see users (all intelligent people!) struggling to find their desired information or function in the OPAC, just because the button for that function was not where they naturally tended to think it should be. And this frustrated me, because a lot of the simple changes I could see that they needed were not those I had control to make in the OPAC.

To my colleagues who might argue that I am trying to throw out MARC, nothing could be further from the truth! Give me MARC in all it's organized glory. Just let me have more control over how I can present all this MARC-y goodness to my users. That's all I'm saying. And I'm not the only one.