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Monday, February 14, 2005
The trouble with OPACs
Here's a LINK to an excellent article by Andrew Pace in the Feb. American Libraries about why OPACs 'work' the way they do.
And I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records; nor should any patron be satisfied with even a bona fide answer to that question.
Here is a good quote from the article:
ReplyDeleteAnd I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records; nor should any patron be satisfied with even a bona fide answer to that question.