# Presentation: 024273

## Opacs and our changing environment: Observations, Hopes, and Fears

*Dale Flecker*
*Harvard University Library*
*January, 2005*

## Challenges from a changing environment

- An expanding information universe
- Better search systems
- Invaders in our domain
- An unstable environment
- A role for evaluation/recommendation
- Portals are a puzzle
- FRBR

## 1.  An expanding information universe

- The role and place of the opac
- is changing dramatically!

## From this....

- OPAC

- (*Harvard Crimson*, September, 1988)

## To this....

- Union
- Catalog

- Internet
- Search

- A & I

- Other
- catalogs

- Journal
- Aggregation

- Institutional
- Repository

- BLOG

- Topical
- Portal

- OPAC

## OPAC one of many peer resources

- Multiple local collection catalogs
- Harvard has separate catalogs for visual materials, GIS, archival collections, social science datasets, plus an opac (and lots of little databases)
- Licensed external services proliferating
- 175+ search platforms on the Harvard library portal
- Plus internet engines, on-line book stores, etc., etc.

## Important implication

- Adaptability and integration becoming
-  critical OPAC attributes

## A hope

- Opacs evolve to enable
- greater integration with the larger
- information environment

- Internet and the explosion of digital
- information generating ***tremendous***
- research and innovation in
- search technology

**2.  Better search systems**

## Search technology(examples)

- Faster
- Better results
- Assist the user
- Dealing with large retrieval sets

## Faster search

- 3 seconds
- locate 54 hits
- in 10 million
- records

- Virtually instantaneous
- locate 12,500 hits
- across all web space

## Better results: relevance

- Google
- dominates
- web search
- because of
- relevance
- ranking

## Assist the user (shouldn’t opacs do this?)

## Help with large search result sets: Endeca

- Analyzes result set for
- aggregations under various
- “facets”

## Endeca search result screen

- Subset
- search
- result by
- any of
- these

## (more of same result screen)

- or
- these
- Click
- this

## And get a subset with more options

- More
- subset
- options
- and it’s all
- dynamic

## Help with large search result sets:  Grokker

- Search
-          for
- Visualize
- result sets
- Click on
-  Aleph

## Grokker

- New
- breakdown
- Zoom on
- Aleph

## Compare with singleordered result

- (what is
- in here???)

## A hope

- Opac will profit from
- Internet search innovation

## A related hope

- Help for the user with large
- retrieval sets

## 3. Invaders in our domain

- We’ve been hearing:  “it’s so much easier to
- find books in Amazon – I go there first, than to
-  the catalog”
- And now...Search Inside the Book

## A quote

**“****On the other hand, there’s **
**Amazon.com****.**** I’m hardly the first to **
**note that Amazon as a catalog or research **
**tool is easier to use and significantly more **
**productive than conventional academic **
**library catalogs.”**

- Tim Burke (Swarthmore):  _*Burn the Catalog (2004)*_

## Invaders

- Harvesting digital library metadata
- for search
*(and what next???)*

## Invaders

- 	* Google Print and Google Scholar
- 	* library metadata from OCLC and digital libraries
- 	* search contents of e-journals (CrossSearch)
- 	* search contents of books (GooglePrint)
- What next???
*(and there will be something next!!!)*

## How often have you heard:

- “Why can’t I find journal articles
- along with books in the catalog?”

*(That’s what Google is doing...)*

## A fear

- Opac increasingly ignored
- for more appealing and powerful
- services

## A hope

- Integrate opac information
- with other search services
*(search Google, then find the book *
* **location in your library)*

## 4. An unstable environment

- Many, many more players in the information environment
- Enormous amount of experimentation, creativity
- Technology enables new models, services, and players
- Change enormously rapid

- is only 6 years old....

- Remember

## A fear

- Opac will stagnate and become
- irrelevant

## Why stagnation? 

- Opac technical platform not flexible, unable to evolve rapidly
- opac developments tied to very long development timeframe
- underlying opac model 20 years old, interfaces 10 year old...
- ILS vendors turn their attention elsewhere
- no longer invest resources in opac

## 5. A role for evaluation/recommendation 

- Opacs are consciously non-evaluative...
-  does that serve all users?

## HELP!  -- I just want to read Hamlet

- 53
- pages
- on
- Hamlet
- in
- HOLLIS

## Compare

- System
- selected
- because
- most
- widely
- held

## or...

- Note

## along with...

## Not all users are the same

- Some want to fend for themselves
- while others would welcome
- some assistance...

##  A fear

- The opac will increasingly be a tool
- for only the sophisticated researcher.

## 6.  Portals are a puzzle

- Harvard’s e-resource portal lists 6000 resources
- Compared to opac:  simple search, no added entries, no syndetics, dumb browse arrangement
- Yet 5 to 10 times more use of licensed resources from the portal than from the catalog
- Proposals now to add opac features to the portal
- Multiple entry points
- “See” references

## Three questions

- Is recreating the opac in the portal
- sensible?
- 2.  Will portals scale as the number
- of e-resources grows?
- 3.  Can we afford duplicate maintenance
- of portals and opacs?

## A hope

- Merge opac and portal
- functions and databases

## 7.  FRBR

- Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (IFLA)
- Hierarchic model for bibliographic data
- Work, expression, manifestation, item
- Potentially more coherent view of bibliographic holdings than the “unit record” of catalog cards (and MARC records!)

## 41 pages like this for the IIliad in HOLLIS

## 400 pages like this under Mozart in HOLLIS

- Will FRBR help?

## FRBR OPAC – A “work”

**FRBR OPAC – A “work”**

**Select 6****th**
**Symphony**

**Notes:**
Again, we select the 6th symphony.

## FRBR OPAC – “works” and “expressions”

**FRBR OPAC – “works” and “expressions”**

**Work record**

**Expression**
**records**

**Notice**
**Different**
**Expression:**
**Printed Music**

**Notes:**
As you can see the display is slightly different from the staff windows client.  The tree display is automatically expanded to show the Expression records.  The selected record, in this case the Work record, is off to the right.  Instead of the MARC display of the Work record, I am showing the Full display.  The library has control as to what tags are displayed, what labels are used for each tag, and what order the tags display in.  In this example, the label for 240 is Uniform Title.  Also noticed that while most of the Expressions are Musical sound recordings, there is one Expression for “Printed Music”.  We also display icons for the type of material.  In this case a note symbol for printed music and a round looking thing for a sound recording.

## FRBR OPAC – “manifestations”

**FRBR OPAC – “manifestations”**

**Tree **
**expanded to**
**show**
**Manifestations**

**Notes:**
Here the tree has been expanded to show the Manifestations for the NBC Symphony Orchestra Expression.  Notice that the Work record is still being displayed in the box.  That’s because no other entry on the tree has been selected.

## FRBR OPAC – “manifestations” and “items”

**FRBR OPAC – “manifestations” and “items”**

**Notice the**
**Items**

**A printed**
**music**
**Manifestation**
**record’s**
**full display**

**Notes:**
Another example of selecting a different Manifestation.  In this case a manifestation of the printed music expression.  This gives me the chance expound a little bit on FRBR Works and Expressions.  The Work is Beethoven’s 6th Symphony.  Most of the Expressions associated with this FRBR Work are different performances of the symphony, but in this example we are looking at a totally different kind of Expression, not a performance, but the alphanumeric Expression of the Printed Music for the 6th Symphony.  Same Work, but different Expressions.  Also, notice that this particular Manifestation has items with it.  Most of the FRBR records we have already looked at or will look at do not have items associated with them.  That’s basically because I was too lazy to create item records for them, since there really isn’t any difference between a “normal” non-FRBR item and an item attached to a FRBR manifestation record.

## A hope

- Opacs move beyond “one card per
- item” model and use the power of
- the computer to organize complex
- data

## A fear

- The library community will be consumed
- by FRBR/AACR – III debates and
- implementation while the information
- environment moves on without us.

## In sum...

## The fearful picture

- Opac is bypassed for more exciting and effective search engines
- Opacs stagnate through neglect
- Opacs feel increasingly rule-bound and obsolete
- used only by the sophisticated researcher
- Librarians argue about cataloging rules while the larger world moves on....

## More quotes from Burn the Catalog

- “I think we’d be better off to just utterly erase our
- existing academic catalogs”

- “lock all the vendors and librarians and scholars
- together in a room, and make them hammer out
- electronic research tools that are Amazon-plus”

- (to create) “a catalog that is a partner rather than an
- obstacle in the making and tracking of knowledge”

## Expectations are changing

- 20 years ago the Tim Burkes of the
- world were wildly enthusiastic
- about opacs!

## The hopeful picture

- The opac becomes more integrated with the larger information environment
- including metasearch engines
- and internet engines such as Google
- Opac searching improves in parallel with other search environments
- including help with larger retrieval sets
- Opacs and portals merge to simplify the environment for both users and librarians

## The hopeful picture

- Opacs help the general user find a good copy to read
- FRBR makes things better, not worse

- A few questions...

## Questions...

**Questions...**

- Does the competition matter?
- let’m use Google and Amazon if that suits their needs!
- Even if it matters, do we have the resources to hold our own in this environment?
- Google spent $200M in ‘04 in R&D (not including stock options...)
- and expects to increase that by 50% this year

## Questions...

- Should we shrink the role of the opac?
- locating items, organizing deeply complex parts of the collection
- and shrink the cost of creating it?
- Or separate it from the ils and “modernize” it using a commercial search  engine?
- possibly not “MARC aware”...

## Questions...

- Do opacs need expensive, complex metadata in the world of Amazon (simple metadata) and Google (full text searching)?
- is the world moving towards dumb data, smart engines?