[Web4lib] How to label the OPAC

[Richard Wiggins]

Well, although the catalog may physically cover more than books, that's an 
artifact of what objects were placed into the catalog; it does not 
necessarily describe how users of the catalog perceive things. It is a very 
different thing to want to find a book than to want to find a magazine. And 
it is a very different thing to seek to download a full-text resource versus 
wanting to do a tradtional search for an item in the local collection. 
 So you could have:
 -- Find a book in the East Overshoe Library collection
-- Find a magazine or journal in the East Overshoe collection
-- Find a book that we can borrow from the Greater Overshoe Library 
Collective
-- Find and download an article from the Overshoe Regional Research Database
 ... etc.
 /rich
 On 7/25/05, bernhard Eversberg <ev at buch.biblio.etc.tu-bs.de> wrote:
 
> Richard Wiggins wrote:
> > Is there any audience, no matter how experienced, for whom "find books"
> > *doesn't* work?
> > /rich
> 
> At least, since "books" doesn't cover it all, one would have to extend
> it a bit and say "find stuff".
> While I'd agree with this, I still feel the necessity to have a noun and
> to use it in public.
> Or how else can we refer to "it" when mentioning a catalog as a tool?
> Also, while they may be in need of upgrading, catalogs are not really
> obsolete. Good catalogs remain cornerstones of good library work. We are
> doing nobody a service if we try to obscure their very existence and
> their character either by cryptic neologisms (and a different one in
> every other library) or by language that doesn't even put a name on them.
> 
> Regards,
> Bernhard Eversberg
> Universitätsbibliothek Braunschweig
> 
> 
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