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

[Bollinger,Stephen]

Hi All,

I'm late to the conversation, so this may have been said in the pile of unread messages in my inbox:

We do both.  In our left-hand main navigation menu we link to "Library Catalog" but at the top of our home page there is a prominent link labeled "Find Books, Movies & More".  They both go to the same place, our catalog.

The word "Catalog" is there for the poor patrons that have had it drilled into their heads by us for the past 100 years (and for those anti-dumbing-down librarians) and the "Find Books, Movies & More" is there for everyone.

It's the magic of the Web: You've got a blank canvas, there need not be only ONE solution.

http://cadl.org/

Yours,
-Steve

Stephen Bollinger
Internet Specialist
CAPITAL AREA DISTRICT LIBRARY
401 South Capitol Avenue
Lansing, MI  48901-7919
http://www.cadl.org/

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org]On
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] How to label the OPAC (was: Role of the OPAC)
> > primary assumption going in. And how many potential users do we
> > lose--reasonably intelligent people who are making every effort to apply
> > what they know to our websites--because they look, they apply knowledge,
> > then they conclude we don't offer what we need? They aren't "dumb," and
> it's
> > not dumbing anything down to design the system around their task
> knowledge.
> >
> Well, wouldn't that argument hold for *every* Web service, not just for
> ours? What, then, is the core "task knowledge" we can safely assume
> every user to possess?