Page 135 - DLIS007_LIBRARY AUTOMATION

Library Automation

Notes This has, in turn, led to vocal criticisms of these systems within the library community itself, and
in recent years to the development of newer (often termed ‘next-generation’) catalogues.

7.2.3 Next-generation Catalogues

The newest generation of library catalogue systems are distinguished from earlier OPACs by
their use of more sophisticated search technologies, including relevancy ranking and faceted
search, as well as features aimed at greater user interaction and participation with the system,
including tagging and reviews.
These newer systems are almost always independent of the library’s integrated library system
(ILS), instead providing drivers that allow for the synchronization of data between the two
systems. While older online catalogue systems were almost exclusively built by ILS vendors,
libraries are increasingly turning to next generation catalogue systems built by enterprise
search companies and open source projects, often led by libraries themselves. The costs associated
with these new systems, however, have slowed their adoption, particularly at smaller institutions.

Example: An example of a next generation OPAC system is included in the Libramatic
software package.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. The 1990s saw a relative stagnation in the development of …………………….

6. Web search engines provided simpler to use systems that could provide relevancy ranked
search results using probabilistic and …………………… based queries.
7. The first large-scale online catalogues were developed at …………………… University in
1975 and the Dallas Public Library in 1978.
8. Prior to the widespread use of the Internet, the online catalogue was often the first
…………………… system library users ever encountered.

7.3 Online Catalogues and Card Catalogues

Online catalogues are a norm today; they are not static; they have developed rapidly and will
continue to evolve further. By utilising the various capabilities of computers and
telecommunications, online catalogues are adding new features that make them totally different
from traditional catalogues. Online catalogues are now gateways to larger information systems
or, as Hopkins (1993: 127) says, they are the ‘one-stop information store’.
The online environment is an environment encompassing a wide range of information tools,
both bibliographic (such as library catalogues, abstracting and indexing services and book trade
databases) and non-bibliographic (such as numeric databases, directory databases, and full text
databases). Library catalogues are now a small but very important component of the evolving
online environment and are accessible through different tools in the networked environment,
the public access computer system (PACS). The global network is the Internet including various
PACS components such as Gopher, WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), Netscape and Mosaic
and other access modes such as Archie and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) tools. The Webpages
created by libraries and other information providers are becoming very pervasive and are often
used both by librarians and end users as linking sources for library information. The same
workstation serves as a means of navigating the whole world of the Internet. In the online

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