[WEB4LIB] Re: Two steps forward, three steps back

[Genny Engel]

>>> Fiona Bradley <fiona.bradley at sbs.com.au> 12/22/04 01:06PM >>>
Apart from all the technical issues, there are still many OPACs which
are not at all integrated into the rest of a library's site.
Customisation in many cases is no more than a logo. We also need to
work
on having vendors provide OPACs that are easier to configure. 


We have actually been pretty lucky in this last regard, I think, with
our recent move to Dynix's Horizon (the ILS) and Horizon Information
Portal (the public OPAC interface).  It took a lot of work by our
catalog admin, but they're functioning largely the way we wanted.  More
customization options would be great, but there's quite a bit that can
be customized with a relatively minor amount of work for each item
(though the time does add up if you have a lot of tweaks you want to
do!).  We now have much, much more control over which MARC fields and
subfields to include in any given index, and we can create our own
indexes (we used to have to pay the vendor to create them).  So from my
perspective, this is moving in the right direction.

As for integrating into the rest of the site, I cringe at the thought
of having to learn all the nuts and bolts of the OPAC's web server and
application code in order to tweak it to do that (it is running on its
own server using a Java infrastructure that is completely unrelated to
our public website's web server software).  I'm just thankful at this
point that I can use normal tools like MySQL and JavaScript on the
public website without having to be compatible with the Java stuff on
the other server.  My one quibble would be that every time we upgrade a
version they change the syntax of the links into the catalog, i.e., if I
want to point from the website into a particular search in the catalog,
I have to change my link to use the new syntax.  

The critical issues for us have mainly been, now that we have so much
control, what is going to work for the user?  Do we make our default
search a Title Browse because on the old system that used to be option
#1 and therefore we've effectively trained the patrons and staff to
start with a title browse?  Or do we make it General Keyword because
that will best handle topical and/or author queries?  

Have just been enjoying The Big Red Fez which contains the answer to
that question on page 51, and again on page 103, and in the caption on
108:  Test and measure!




Genny Engel
Internet Librarian
Sonoma County Library
gengel at sonoma.lib.ca.us
707 545-0831 x581