Internet Librarian 2008: Solving the OPAC Problem

Internet Librarian 2008: Solving the OPAC Problem
John Blyberg & Chris Barr

John Blyberg started with his presentation: SOPAC2, the Social OPAC.  John started by saying "OPACS fail."  OPACS do not allow for enough personalization or customization because of the way the vendors have locked down the product.  As a patron you can't go in and make it feel like it is yours.  And most importantly, while the rest of the world seems to understand the idea that you create a web presence and unify all of your services into one place with a single log-in that doesn't involve a 14-digit barcode log-in, that is what we do.  That is what we have chosen to do, our vendosr have chosen for us.  A few years ago, in 2005, at the Ann Arbor District Library, John and his team were using Drupal for their Content Management System.  As an initial foray into social cataloging, John created an application that showed an online card catalog image and let people write on them to make comments.  There are some problems with social reviews and tags in individual catalogs - most of the "Top Ten Tags" have been in the top ten for a long time.  And after 3 years there are less than 1,000 reviews.  As a discovery tool it was hitting a very narrow slice of the audience.  About 8 months ago they started working on SOPAC again and redesigned it from the ground up.  SOPAC2 is completely re-written with new code in a new architecture.  SOPAC2 is designed on top of Locum.  Locum allows you to write an ILS connector with your ILS, whatever it is, without any modification of SOPAC2.  Another independent software library allows you to do bibligraphic social data programs (Insurge).  This manages the database of reviews and ratings.  John now works for the Darien Library and you can see SOPAC2 in action at darienlibrary.org.  All the theming and configuration depends on how you configure Drupal.  It works out of the box with whatever Drupal theme you are using (WHOO HOO!).  People get to log in with their personally chosen IDs, not barcode numbers.  One set of tags is "staff favorites" which is the digital equivalent of the staff picks bookshelves.  SOPAC2 also has an advanced search feature, using the Drupal jquery.  You can do an advanced search through a drop-down sub-window at any time while you're in the catalog without losing your original page.  The search is clearly explained to you on the right-side.  Through one-click search modification, you can add or remove search elements without having to go back to the advanced search page and re-running your search.  It uses Google's "did you mean" to correct spelling of incorrectly spelled search terms.  If you click on the record and are logged in you can rate the book, add tags, and/or add a review.  The tags and reviews are immediately indexed and searchable.  They don't have to create new book lists manually any more because those are automatically searchable through the advanced search and displayed on the website.  The My Account page allows for showing your checked-out books, requested items, tags you use the most, your reviews, and lets you pay your fines online (through your ILS's ecommerce model).  The elements of SOPAC2 can be configured easily.  You can set up the connection to Locum, your URL prefix, number of results per page, and more all with a simple web form on the administrator's side.    The next release will have RSS feeds of the reviews, etc., work with consortia, and will let you associate multiple card numbers with a single account.

Chris Barr talked about his library's (Villanova University) use of VuFind.  Our library websites are monsters - our website proper, databases, catalog, etc. that all have different interfaces and requires the user to learn a lot to use what is functionally one site.  Additionally, the advanced search feature is for advanced users - librarians, those who know how to front-load a search.  Creating a system that doesn't require you to know the LC subject headings is a good and worthy goal.  Faceted browsing does this.  Author searching (last name, first name) is also a huge problem in our catalog searches.  Chris also touched on the limitations of customizing OPACs.  Most catalogs are also still missing all the cool Web 2.0 bells and whistles.  Their idea was to create one search box to search all library content in one place.  That wasn't realistic immediately, however, the result was VuFind.  VuFind takes the information in your catalog and puts it in a database system that allows customized and easy harvesting.  They collaborated with the University of Virginia folks to create VuFind - an overlay open source discovery layer.  VuFind uses "SolrMark" (?) in the same way that SOPAC2 uses Locum.  One of the benefits of both VuFind and SOPAC2 is that you can change your underlying ILS without changing the front-end searching system that your users see.  VuFind offers faceted results, live status of items, author pages with bios, browse features, RSS feeds, tags, favorites, book covers and reviews from Amazon or Syndetics, and bookmarkable queries and records with persistent URLs.  They launched their system in August but other libraries uusing VuFind include the National Library of Australia, CARLI system in Illinois, and Yale University.  They have a search bar on every part of their site in the header that searches the website, the catalog, and pointers to the main pages of useful databases.  The Catalog tab in their header defaults the search to catalog and uses VuFind.  The faceted search options like format, topic, author, etc. show up on the right side in the sidebar much like SOPAC2.  Beside each item on the results page shows if an item is available - if it's green it's available, if red it's not.  They use an AJAX trick to do this - a javascript that runs and queries the catalog while the results from the VuFind Index get loaded.  The availability shows up after the results are initially displayed since it's searching separately, but that way it doesn't slow down the search.  The site also offers comments and reviews, including reviews coming out of Syndetics and Amazon.  It also offers APA & MLA citations with one click.  The site also has Zotero compatibliity and lets you export the record via email or text messaging.  There is also an add-to-favorites option that lets people tag items and organize their favorites.  In their newest version they're using WordPress style templates to allow users to customize the search and integrate it into their own environment.

IL2008