[WEB4LIB] The OPAC as Portal - Not!

[Eric Hellman]

Hello Web4Lib'ers

I've been lurking on the list for a while now, learning a lot, and I
thought it was about time to contribute.

I think that the idea that libraries should aspire to be internet
information "portals" is not that far from the mark , but misdirected
metooism nonetheless. I think that the way libraries should be thinking of
themselves in the age of the internet is as "information plug-ins".

For example, the recent comment that Libraries ought to emulate some of the
cool things that Amazon is doing is dangerously close to portalistic
metooism. If you ask me (a non-librarian), what a user wants is not for
their library to copy Amazon, but rather for their library to be
*incorporated into* Amazon. I'd like to see a link to the user's library
webOPAC on the Amazon page! In a year or two this will be a reality. (Of
course, emulating Amazon's creativity and quality of execution is something
we should do.)

Same with Yahoo. Look at all the "Plugin" information services. Reuters.
CBSMarketplace. Motley Fool. Sporting News. EdgarOnline. 411. Zacks. Lonely
Planet. etc. There's no fundamental reason that links to a user's library
holdings couldn't be placed along side these other services.

Some reasons why the "portal" paradigm is a misdirection for libraries:

1. Private and public libraries are not and will never be the exclusive or
even primary sources of information for the vast majority of users. They
tend to be specialized, deep, rich information resources serving smaller
groups of users.

2. Portals like Yahoo and Amazon do a rather good job at what they do,
which covers a lot of  territory that traditionally belonged to libraries.
They spend a lot of money doing it. It doesn't make sense to duplicate the
services they provide. If you can't beat'em, join 'em.

3. Because of the internet, libraries have to delocalize and interoperate.
For example, why should a librarian in Iowa organize a collection of
electronic resources on "Technology in Sung Dynasty China" or "Black Women
Writers of the 1930's" if someone in New York is doing it? Would anyone
want a Sung Dynasty Technology "portal" on the web?

4. The "portal" paradigm emphasizes the transition between one information
environment and another one. Library users have too many information
environments already; they want everything to just be the web.

A demonstration experiment where important content providers such as Wiley
Interscience and the American Physical Society have made hyperlinks to
libraries at Los Alamos and University of Ghent is described in the latest
D-LIB magazine in an article by Herbert van de Sompel and Patrick
Hochstenbach,
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october99/van_de_sompel/10van_de_sompel.html .
What you should get from this article is that linking in and to libraries
isn't a pie-in-the-sky thing.


Eric Hellman

At 6:00 PM -0700 10/19/99, Tony Barry wrote:
>At 02:02 PM -0700 1/10/99, Prentiss Riddle wrote:
>>when will the digital library go beyond the "card" catalog
>>model and start implementing friendly features like this?
>
>Nobody has taken up on Prentice's comment above.
>
>Is the OPAC a portal?
>
>We need to decide what the OPAC is for. Is it and add on to the
>inventory/circulation system or a tool to find information?
>

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           Tools for 21st Century Scholarly Publishing