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Abstract

Several studies on OPACs have been made since the early 1980s. However, OPAC development has been governed by systems designers, bibliographic networks and technical services librarians, but not necessarily according to user needs. Existing OPACs demonstrate differences, for example, in the range and complexity of their functional features, terminology and help facilities. While many libraries have already established their own OPACs, there is a need to bring together in the form of guidelines or recommendations a corpus of good practice to assist libraries to design or re-design their OPACs.
As mentioned above, the guidelines are intended to apply to all types of catalogue, including Web-based catalogues, GUI-based interfaces, and Z39.50-web interfaces. The focus of the guidelines is on the display of cataloguing information (as opposed to circulation, serials check-in, fund accounting, acquisitions, or bindery information). However, some general statements are made concerning the value of displaying to users information that is drawn from these other types of records. The guidelines do not attempt to cover HELP screens, searching methods, or command names and functions. Thus, the guidelines do not directly address the difference between menu-mode access (so common now in GUI and Web interfaces) vs. command-mode access (often completely unavailable in GUI and Web interfaces). However, note that in menu-mode access, the user often has to go through many more screens to attain results than in command-mode access, and each of these screens constitutes a display. The intent is to recommend a standard set of display defaults, defined as features that should be provided for users who have not selected other options, including users who want to begin searching right away without much instruction. It is not the intent to restrict the creativity of system designers who want to build in further options to offer to advanced users (beyond the defaults), advanced users being those people who are willing to put some time into learning how to use the system in more sophisticated and complex ways. The Task Force is aware of the fact that many existing systems are not capable of following all of the recommendations in this document. We hope that existing systems will attempt to work toward the implementation of the guidelines as they develop new versions of their software in the future.