Library Garden

Putting my head back into the OPAC

A couple of months ago I questioned whether the quality of our library OPACs figures greatly into the overall satisfaction of our customers. Something I read in the New York Times this weekend: made me reflect on that post and wonder whether I was asking the right question. This is the what got me a’ponderin’:

Almost every Web film purveyor is planning to solve this bane of the modern culture consumer “too much choice” with some form of social networking. Recommendations, user reviews, friend lists and member pages are designed to help viewers determine which films they should watch.

When I read that, I found myself making these mental substitutions:

Almost every Web film purveyor library is planning to solve this bane of the modern culture consumer “too much choice” with some form of social networking. Recommendations, user reviews, friend lists and member pages are designed to help viewers library users determine which films they should watch books, cds and film they might enjoy next.

Now I’m wondering if the question I should be asking is, “how much value could we add to our customers’ experience, how much more engaging could libraries be, if our OPACS were integrated with social software and offered reviews, friend lists, member pages and (not incidentally) filters and recommendations?”

March 19, 2007 at 10:05 am Peter Bromberg 10 comments