CCCII Software for the CJK OPAC: University of Oregon Field Test Report (1995)

At present the on-line public access catalog (OPAC) still remains the primary tool for patrons searching for materials in the academic and research libraries in North America. The performance of an OPAC has a direct impact on how effectively a library provides information and services to its users. The increasing demand for information access to a wide spectrum of resources in various formats constantly challenges library professionals, library automation scientists, and library system vendors to deliver more powerful and sophisticated OPAC systems with higher performance levels at lower costs. The OPAC systems in East Asian libraries have to meet even more stringent and demanding criteria, since they should not only display both vernacular and romanized bibliographic information but also enable users to input and manipulate vernacular data in bibliographic records. An OPAC that does not handle vernacular data cannot truly function as a Chinese/-Japanese/Korean on-line public access catalog (CJK OPAC) because it cannot deliver the essential vernacular bibliographic information that effectively helps identify and retrieve a bibliographic entity. Moreover, transliterated or romanized descriptions of CJK materials are often too ambiguous and confusing to be helpful to users. Innovative Interfaces, Inc. was the first library system vendor to install the integrated automation system with full CJK capability in East Asian libraries in the United States and Asia and has recently released the Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange (CCCII) software that marks another significant success in the development of CJK OPAC systems. The University of Oregon Library continues to seek advanced technology and information tools that will enhance the total bibliographic access to research materials in various languages and formats in the Library collections. Incorporating the CJK module into the library's on-line catalog to improve user access to CJK vernacular materials is one of the efforts we have made to enhance the capability and overall performance of our OPAC system. Our first INNOPAC CJK OPAC Workstation is currently functioning smoothly, and the Library administration ultimately intends to install more public CJK OPAC terminals at various locations on campus. Because of our Library's long-term commitment and interest in the INNOPAC CJK system, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. offered us the opportunity to test the CCCII software for CJK OPAC in the summer of 1994. With technical support from the Library Systems Department, we concluded our test of this new software version of CJK OPAC in the fall of 1994. Throughout the entire testing process we were not only interested in discovering the major features of the CCCII software, but also in examining the differences between this software version and our hardware-supported CJK OPACâ€”the INNOPAC CJK CCCII Workstation. In my previous article, "CJK OPAC at the University of Oregon library,"* I discussed in detail the system features of the INNOPAC CCCII CJK Workstation, including the input methods, searching, editing, and inputting of CJK bibliographic records, etc. Since these features are virtually all available on the CCCII software CJK OPAC, to avoid repetition, I will focus in this report on those new features of the CCCII software that are not available on the CCCII CJK Workstationâ€”the hardwaresupported CJK OPAC.