Lesson 11 - OPAC Exploration

The activity this week was quite exciting for me, as I was able to sit in a Teacher Librarian's circulation desk chair and take a closer look at the features of the OPAC. The first part of our activity was to "look at the student search page through the eyes of a student". The OPAC that this particular library uses is the Destiny Follett Software. 

Observations from a student perspective:

The first thing I noticed when conducting a search is that you need to have correct spelling, or close to it. At least if there are “no matches found” it prompts a “did you mean” with a drop down of possibilities. When locating some resources, unfortunately there are no pictures to go with the book titles – a feature that I enjoy with the public library. That way, when I am searching for the title on the shelves, I have an idea of what it looks like. I noticed that if a student wanted to find a particular book title (ie. Scaredy Squirrel) and clicked on “subject”, instead of “title”, then no matches come up. Students will have better results if they click on the accurate index. When conducting searches, it is nice that they have a Bolean Logic search, but a student will not understand how to use this unless they have been taught. I also liked the visual index – however it seems that the headings are too limited. I wonder if there is the ability to add more? For instance, when looking up squirrels, I wasn’t sure which picture to click on after animals – there was not a clear category for me to select. It is also very easy to see if the book is in or out of the library, and how many copies are available

Destiny Quest  (Follett) was another tab located underneath the Library Search, so I tried searching using that as well I do like the search feature in Destiny Quest that if you start spelling a word, other key words that start with the same letter pop up - this way if a student doesn’t know the exact spelling, the search may be more successful. Also, a student can see other subjects that are available in the library (beginning with the same letter though).

The home page in Destiny is more visual and appealing to students. There are graphics with books that immediately tells the user if the book is in or out. The Top 10 Books area lets students know which books are popular. There is a visible list of New Arrivals. I also like the shelf browse feature, which can allow a student to look at other books by the same author, or subject, or whatever would be on the actual library shelf next to it. The graphics are fun on the search page, however there are no topic headings like in the other library search

The second part of the activity this week involved "going into the administrative applications of the OPAC". I was able to spend about 1 ½ hours with the TL at my daughter’s elementary school library going over the OPAC. In terms of some of the functions of a catalogue (Identifying, Locating, Collocating) I found this OPAC very useful.

• Identifying: It was simple enough to look at the records of what is in the library collection.
• Locating: One feature I liked was the ability for the TL to create their own locations in the menu for resources. For instance, many Christmas items were “Top Shelf Storage Room.”
• Collocating: the search functions were simple to find records grouped together by author/subject/etc.

Beneficial features of the “Back Office” :

• It is a nice feature that a photo is included for each patron, and there are visible tabs for updating patrons/classes
• Library policies included areas for setting/modifying max. checkouts for teachers, students, and even parents. This could be easily modified if needed. 
• An area for setting access levels by students, teachers, parents, assistants, etc…to ensure that only authorized people are getting into various administrative aspects of the OPAC
• Calendar hours – this is a handy tool for blocking out holidays, etc… so that books don’t come due on that day (skips over the day)
• Many of the headings have a brief summary of the function which assists the user in quickly identifying which aspects he/she would like to use

Another feature that I thought was useful was that once a student places a hold on a book, the TL has the authority to OK the hold. I questioned as to why she would want to use this feature, and she said she liked to keep track of what the kids were trying to take out, and to make sure it was appropriate for their grade level. When the book is returned, there is a message that a student has placed a hold on the book.

When asking the TL if she likes the system and finds it useful, she stated that it is “easy to use…when it works” so apparently there are some issues with the system freezing, or not working properly.  In the 1 ½ hours that I spent looking through the system, I began to feel quite comfortable with it, and was starting to explore other areas we hadn’t discussed together. The TL mentioned that the best thing was to just play around with the features to figure them all out, and I would agree that this would be a beneficial way to get comfortable with the OPAC, without the fear of messing something up!