Mark writes:
>"There's no effective way to initiate a search without typing
>something in. It doesn't need to be that way, though. And when we
>think of the OPAC as a discovery tool for research, I think browsing
>is more effective. "
The basic notion that I had in mind was more the idea of an "alternative technological" approach to our opac's. Microsoft Surface might just be one of many ways in which it can be done. But as pointed out earlier the caveats of the MS product might heavily outweigh the benefits.
What I really think is interesting though is to let the actual books cross over into your OPAC. If you would actually be able to initiate search and browsing simply by putting a book on a table. You could even take it further and let people put a few books on the table, and create an "instant bookshelf" and have the system provide "LibraryThing Style" recommendations.
My initial point wasn't that "MS Surface" is the way to go, but rather that our next Generation OPAC should be about much more, than just competing about who gets to create the Best Library 2.0 Web OPAC.
We took the first great leap when we went from physical Catalog Cards and introduced Computers and OPAC's in to our libraries. Why is it then, that we've become obsessed with improving this tool (the opac), instead of looking beyond and keep trying to find better tools for our patrons to find books.
I think our next generation tools, will be the tools that bridge the physical library with the "Electronic knowledge universe" which we are currently so obsessed with building. Or to put it in buzzwords: "We need start creating Catalog Mashup's that interact with the Physics-API of our current Library Building Implementation."
- Bernd.
Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 13:31:35 EDT