How much more do you want on your OPAC screen?
Back in the good old days of green-screens with a limit of 80 characters by 24 rows to work with, the question for the OPAC screen designer was “What can I drop to make this fit on the display?”. In today’s Web 2.0/Library 2.0 world, where the designers have a whole AJAX-enhanced Web Browser playground, the question seems to have morphed in to “What else can I squeeze on to the screen to ‘add value to the user experience’?”.
John Blyberg over at AADL has wrapped their OPAC in a blogging platform, successfully making their Library’s Internet presence a participative experience. The main OPAC result pages he has left simple adding on links to extra features such as create your own Card Catalogue image or Additional Information in the form of reviews and summaries.
At Huddersfield University Dave Pattern has also added value to their OPAC specifically around suggestions following failed searches and related (by subject, borrowed by others, or FRBR related) items.
Mr Pattern also has library floor plans on the same page and if he was to embed the type of Additional Information that AADL link to, you may end up with a situation where the user could not see the information within all the added-value information.
This is not a criticism of either of these two excellent OPAC sites, but more of a question around exactly how much added-value information our users are capable of consuming/understanding on one page and if they will ever find it if its hidden under a link to another page.
Technologies like AJAX do give use the opportunity to display dynamically expanding boxes, refresh areas of the screen without refreshing the page etc.
How is this going to influence the design of the OPAC? I definitely don’t have anywhere near all, if any, of the answers.
I would be really interested to hear opinions in the all on one screen v lots of clicks debate. What will the accepted norm OPAC screen be like in 4-5 years time?
So, OPAC-2010 what do you think it will look like? - Use this forum to let me know.
Good question Richard!
At the moment, I'm pretty much limited (by the way the OPAC works) to having extra content on the same page or in a pop-up window. We could probably do something a little more advanced, but it would mean performing a major rewrite on the OPAC's underlying XSL stylesheets.
The floor plans (which take up nearly an entire virtual page) are deliberately placed as far down the page as possible, with anchor links to them in the holding information box. We could have them as pop-up windows, but (to my mind) it's cleaner to have them on the same page.
Sadly even without any customisations, many Dynix OPACs will have the all important holdings information below the virtual page fold (simply because the bib info can take up a large amount of space).
Personally, I tend to prefer the "all on one screen", but for the info to be arranged so that the most important bits are at the top of the screen. Unfortunately the design of the Dynix OPAC means that you loose over 200 vertical pixels to the various navigation and search bars.
We're in the midst of running a Student Satisfaction Survey, and the floor plans have been mentioned by a respectable number of students (or should that be "a number of respectable students"?). In fact, their only major gripe with the catalogue relates to stock availability -- i.e. the OPAC says it's available, but (for whatever reason) the book isn't actually on the shelf.
Out of interest, I've also just started logging usage of our customisations. So, I should be able to release some quantitative information soon relating to use of our various suggestions & tweaks.
Stats will be interesting
Those stats will be very interesting.
The proof of the worth of things is in the consumption. Are you going to run a book on which is your most popular enhancement?
Richard.
re: Stats will be interesting
At the moment, the spelling corrections/suggestions are the most frequently used with the "also borrowed" not far behind.
Good question, my wish list
I agree: good question!
I want a lot (sorry). and I believe ajax goodness can deliver it without cluttering the screen.
I want to see an image of the book, it helps me to locate it, and to see if it was the one I was looking at last week (eg Can't remember which java book i was reading but it had a blue cover with a dog on it)
I want a description of the book and ToC. Useful to see if the book will be of use when I'm researching something (book titles are not always useful). and good for when I want a book on Java networking (the library may have 20 java books but which have a whole section on networking)
I want comments, and tags, from users
I want to see what others have borrowed, who have borrowed this.
I want to see clearly where the book is within the library (like Huddersfield).
I want to click to see:
- other versions (audio, CDROM from book, hardback)
- other by same author
- other in same subject
I may want to rate the book out of 10.
If for some reason i want to see all the detailed information (ie everything in the marc record) then there should be a button somewhere.
I want a button which will show if libraries near by have it and if it is in stock.
I want all this on an uncluttered interface! :)
I wish library web catalogues could develop at the same pace as Amazon.
Chris Keene - University of Sussex.