OPACs as Information points

We (Canterbury Christ Church Uni) are moving to a new library next summer and are thinking of using our OPAC terminals to provide much more than just teh online OPAC. We are thinking they could potentialluy link to our e-resources, to course specific info, to info about the library, and to info that is specific to that specific location within the library.

Has anyone else employed this sort of technology in the library and if so have you an exmple online that we could look at ???

Thanks
Andy

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Permalink Reply by Buffy Hamilton on October 5, 2008 at 6:44pm

Is this what you have in mind?

http://library.plymouth.edu/search/harry+potter

Buffy

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Permalink Reply by Deborah Fitchett on October 5, 2008 at 7:02pm

Hi from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch (New Zealand)! :-)

Our OPAC terminals give access to the entire university website - so that includes all the library webpages (including databases, chat reference, etc) and other uni webpages like department pages, uni webmail, etc. We didn't do anything special to the OPAC, just configured the computers to allow all canterbury.ac.nz webpages and refuse access to anything else.

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Permalink Reply by Andy Ekins on October 6, 2008 at 7:58am

Hi Deborah,

You wouldn't believe how often our Uni gets confused for yours !

We only got University status a couple of years back and I believe we are not as big a you...so you have probably got more right to the name than we have :)

Our full title is 'Canterbury Christ Church University' so not exactly the same as you!

Thanks for the OPAC info.
:)

Andy

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Permalink Reply by Bob Kosovsky on October 6, 2008 at 2:39pm

HI Andy,

Somewhere among his many pages Roy Tennant was fond of saying that the OPAC (or ILS, which seems to be the current nomenclature of the day) can't function entirely as the backbone (user tagging in your catalog?). (Try the links on this page). Rather, it should be one of several services that are the backbone of a new front end which can be manipulated and harvested to better advantage than the ILS.

I think I've seen a few, but most libraries that I've seen do have a single front end which then branches out to resources such as the catalog, electronic serials, other e-resources, etc.