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August 07, 2006
Bloggy-Bloggy OPAC
Casey Bisson writes that the Lamson Library at Plymouth State University has decided to use the WordPress-based OPAC (WPopac) he built on nights and weekends as its primary OPAC from now on. The OPAC runs off of blogging software, something new and intriguing to many of us who are paying zillions of dollars for a junky ILS. There is also a plan to release the source code for the WPopac in the near future so other libraries can capitalize on all of Casey's hard work.
August 7, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
Yes, of course that is true. The back end of the ILS is important. The public face of our ILS, the OPAC, is the single biggest point of online contact we have with our users. It's what they use the most. And when it stinks, as (frankly) every commercially provided ILS's OPAC does, then projects like this provide us with a glimmer of hope. And also, they tend to instill us with a bit of anger--that these companies we're paying lots of money to can't come up with something simple and usable for our users, but individual libraries are having to invest staff time and financial resources to do what those companies should be doing for us already.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton (LiB) | August11, 2006
Without taking anything away from Casey's work (which is quite wonderful), do remember that what he's done is provided a new discovery tool. He has NOT built a new ILS. Is the public presence of the ILS important? Of course! Is it equivalent to the ILS? No. Your ILS provides (or should) a way to handle monographic and serials acquisitions, cataloging, binding control, and a whole host of other things in addition to the opac. Should the OPACs being sold by ILS vendors be better? Again. . . of course! But to equate the entire ILS with the opac is an apples and trees comparison.
Posted by: | August11, 2006
