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The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''
library catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also ...
'', is an
online database An online database is a database accessible from a local network or the Internet, as opposed to one that is stored locally on an individual computer or its attached storage (such as a CD). Online databases are hosted on websites, made available as ...
of materials held by a
library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
or group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously used in libraries.


History


Early online

Although a handful of experimental systems existed as early as the 1960s, the first large-scale online catalogs were developed at
Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...
in 1975 and the Dallas Public Library in 1978. These and other early online catalog systems tended to closely reflect the card catalogs that they were intended to replace. Using a dedicated
terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output devi ...
or
telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
client, users could search a handful of pre-coordinate indexes and browse the resulting display in much the same way they had previously navigated the card catalog. Throughout the 1980s, the number and sophistication of online catalogs grew. The first commercial systems appeared, and would by the end of the decade largely replace systems built by libraries themselves. Library catalogs began providing improved search mechanisms, including Boolean and keyword searching, as well as ancillary functions, such as the ability to place holds on items that had been checked-out. At the same time, libraries began to develop applications to automate the purchase, cataloging, and circulation of books and other library materials. These applications, collectively known as an integrated library system (ILS) or library management system, included an online catalog as the public interface to the system's inventory. Most library catalogs are closely tied to their underlying ILS system.


Stagnation and dissatisfaction

The 1990s saw a relative stagnation in the development of online catalogs. Although the earlier character-based interfaces were replaced with ones for the Web, both the design and the underlying search technology of most systems did not advance much beyond that developed in the late 1980s. At the same time, organizations outside of libraries began developing more sophisticated information retrieval systems. Web search engines like
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
and popular e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com provided simpler to use (yet more powerful) systems that could provide relevancy ranked search results using probabilistic and vector-based queries. Prior to the widespread use of the Internet, the online catalog was often the first information retrieval system library users ever encountered. Now accustomed to web search engines, newer generations of library users have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the complex (and often arcane) search mechanisms of older online catalog systems. This has, in turn, led to vocal criticisms of these systems within the library community itself, and in recent years to the development of newer (often termed 'next-generation') catalogs.


Next-generation catalogs

Newer generations of library catalog systems, typically called discovery systems (or a discovery layer), are distinguished from earlier OPACs by their use of more sophisticated search technologies, including relevancy ranking and
faceted search Faceted search is a technique that involves augmenting traditional search techniques with a faceted navigation system, allowing users to narrow down search results by applying multiple filters based on faceted classification of the items. It is so ...
, as well as features aimed at greater user interaction and participation with the system, including tagging and reviews. These new features rely heavily on existing
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
which may be poor or inconsistent, particularly for older records. Newer catalog platforms may be independent of the organization's integrated library system (ILS), instead providing drivers that allow for the synchronization of data between the two systems. While the original online catalog interfaces were almost exclusively built by ILS vendors, libraries have increasingly sought next-generation catalogs built by enterprise search companies and
open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...
projects, often led by libraries themselves.


Union catalogs

Although library catalogs typically reflect the holdings of a single library, they can also contain the holdings of a group or
consortium A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources ...
of libraries. These systems, known as
union catalog A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases. P ...
s, are usually designed to aid the borrowing of books and other materials among the member institutions via
interlibrary loan Interlibrary loan (abbreviated ILL, and sometimes called interloan, interlending, document delivery, document supply, or interlibrary services, abbreviated ILS) is a service where patrons of one library can borrow materials and receive photocopies ...
. Examples of this type of catalogs include
COPAC Copac (originally an acronym of Consortium of Online Public Access Catalogues) was a union catalogue which provided free access to the merged online catalogues of many major research libraries and specialist libraries in the United Kingdom and I ...
, SUNCAT,
NLA Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text docume ...
, and
WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
—the latter catalogs the collections of libraries worldwide.


Related systems

There are a number of systems that share much in common with library catalogs, but have traditionally been distinguished from them. Libraries utilize these systems to search for items not traditionally covered by a library catalog, although these systems are sometimes integrated into a more comprehensive discovery system.
Bibliographic database A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, ...
s—such as
Medline MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...
, ERIC, PsycINFO, and many others—index journal articles and other research data. There are also a number of applications aimed at managing documents, photographs, and other digitized or
born-digital The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital, as in the case of file ...
items such as Digital Commons and
DSpace DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content. While DSpace shares some feature overlap with content management systems and document manag ...
. Particularly in academic libraries, these systems (often known as
digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital ...
systems or
institutional repository An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published work ...
systems) assist with efforts to preserve documents created by faculty and students. Electronic resource management helps librarians to track selection, acquisition, and licensing of a library's electronic information resources.


See also

* International Cataloguing Principles (ICP)


References

{{Authority control Information science Library science Library automation Library cataloging and classification Online databases