To read this content please select one of the options below:

Subject searching in the OPAC of a special library: problems and issues

M.S. Sridhar (Head, Library and Documentation Division, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, India)

OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives

ISSN: 1065-075X

Article publication date: 1 December 2004

2838

Abstract

This paper draws on data from a comparative study of use of the online public access catalogue (OPAC) and the card catalogue of the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) library, and examines the steady decline in the use of subject searching by end‐users and the associated problems and issues. It presents data to highlight the negligible use of Boolean operators and combination searches, variations in descriptors assigned to books of the same class numbers, and too many records tagged to very broad descriptors. The article concludes that moving from a traditional card catalogue to a modern OPAC has not made subject searching more attractive or effective.

Keywords

Citation

Sridhar, M.S. (2004), "Subject searching in the OPAC of a special library: problems and issues", OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 183-191. https://doi.org/10.1108/10650750410564691

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles