[Web4lib] How to label the OPAC (was: Role of the OPAC)

[Thomas, Susan Elaine]

I agree that it is important to look at the terminology we use with our
patrons and "Find books and more" certainly makes much more immediate
sense than the library catalog.  But at the same time I wonder if we are
not doing a disservice to our users in not educating them about the term
catalog and what it means.  Isn't this something they should know,
especially as they attend and hopefully graduate from college?  Colleges
certainly don't seem to have a problem making students learn other new
words like registrar, bursar, transcript, section closed, etc. I can
understand not having them know and understand what a marc record is or
even that a database records is composed of fields that usually
represent something.  

Perhaps if we tried to make sure that the word catalog was more main
stream than it would not be a problem to use.  Interestingly enough I
believe that most (emphasis on most) school libraries are still teaching
students about the library's catalog even in an online environment.  Why
therefore are academic libraries trying to simplify or dumb this down
for students?  As working adults in whatever setting they find
themselves wouldn't it be more beneficial for them to be able to
intelligently use and understand the word "catalog" when talking with
other colleagues, businesses, universities, etc.  It is not even a
difficult word to pronounce, spell, or understand unlike something like
electrophoresis.  

Susan Thomas
suethoma at iusb.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Drew, Bill
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 8:43 AM
To: John Kupersmith; Richard Wiggins
Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] How to label the OPAC (was: Role of the OPAC)

How about "Find Books, Videos, Etc." as we do it in our website?  It
also uses the "title='Find books, videos, and much more using the
library online catalog.' attribute in the link to provide more
information. We also have a catalog search box on every webpage and if
we ever get a true federated search product, we will replace the catalog
search form with that. 


Bill Drew
drewwe at morrisville.edu
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