The OPAC and ‘real research’ at Harvard
Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 2:30 PM–3:15 PM CDT
Utopia A
Product or Program Track
General/ Strategic--Not Product Specific
Aleph
Primo/MetaLib
Aleph
Primo/MetaLib
Session Description
We’re fortunate to have some dedicated and passionate users of the Harvard Library, some of whom are deeply attached to the Aleph OPAC (“HOLLIS Classic”) that has been in place for well over a decade. We’ve been running this system in parallel to “next-generation discovery” tools, but one day it will have to retire. Among some faculty and graduate students, there is the belief that the newer tools, while they offer some advantages, do not offer sufficient features to serve as an adequate replacement for the OPAC. How do we move forward without leaving our users at a loss? Which functions are handled better by the OPAC? What improvements are needed in ‘next-generation’ tools to satisfy the needs of users at a research library?