Evaluation of an Online Catalog Assignment

Evaluation of an Online Catalog

Assignment

The Scenario

Your institution, the Lily and James Potter Memorial Library, has decided to upgrade to a new Web-based OPAC (online public access catalog). You have been appointed to form a committee that will recommend a vendor to provide the software for your new catalog. Your committee should have three or four members. As part of the research process each committee member will access a Web-based catalog, evaluate it, and report back to the committee. . .

Steps Form a group of 3 or more persons Decide on catalogs to be evaluated Decide on evaluation criteria Each person explores and evaluates

an OPAC Compare evaluations and decide on

which OPAC to recommend Submit individual evaluations, your

comparisons, and your decision

Selecting OPAC Softwarefor

Evaluation

Selecting OPAC Software for Evaluation

Compare oranges to oranges

University Library OPAC

Children’s OPAC

Selecting OPAC Software for Evaluation

Utah State University (Encore from Innovative Interfaces)

Dartmouth College (WebPAC Pro from Innovative Interfaces)

Nottingham Trent University (Primo from ExLibris)

Finding the Corporate IdentifierNottingham Trent University

harry potter

Finding the Corporate IdentifierNottingham Trent University

Finding the Corporate IdentifierNottingham Trent University

Selecting Only One CatalogAuburn University

Selecting Only One CatalogAuburn University

harry potter

Selecting Only One CatalogAuburn University

Selecting Only One CatalogAuburn University

harry potter

Selecting Only One CatalogAuburn University

Finding OPACs for Evaluation

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donnab/lis670/online_catalogs.html

Exploring and Evaluatingan

OPAC

View as a Novice

Do we knowwhat to do?

What will the system do?

View as a Novice

Try It Out

coming of age in Samoa

Try It Out

Do we knowwhat to do

at this point?

Help

To save or print information about specific records ...

WebVoyáge Help Titles

To display the record details associated with a title, click on the underlined title...

Context-Specific Help

Try It Out

Detailed Record

Is this clear?

Help

You also have the options...

WebVoyáge Help Holdings Information

Context-Specific Help

Detailed Record

Search Screen

View as a Novice

Search Screen

Generate an Error Message

Leave text box blank

Generate a Error Message

Type in gibberish

asdfsdf

System Response

Is the language benign?

Is this message helpful?

Steps Today

Form a group with at least 3 persons

Decide on catalogs to be evaluated

Decide on evaluation criteria

Evaluation Criteria

CriteriaError messages are benign and helpful 1 2 3 4 5

Disagree Agree

Positive statement

Rating scale

Comparing Catalogs

CriteriaError messages are benign and helpful 3

USC

There is plenty of lavender

4

Total 5

Harvard Yale

4 3

2 2

6 7