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Date: Sat, 09 Jan 1999 15:31:52 -0800
From: Dorothy McGarry <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Guidelines for OPAC Displays
 
 
 
World-Wide Review of "Guidelines for OPAC Displays"
 
The Task Force on Guidelines for OPAC Displays invites your review of
the proposed text for the "Guidelines for OPAC Displays."
 
The primary purpose of producing these guidelines is to bring together
recommendations on a corpus of good practice to assist libraries in
designing or re-designing their OPACs.  Existing OPACs demonstrate
differences in the range and complexity of their functional features.
It was considered important to make recommendations on displays in
order to work toward fulfulling recognized functions of catalogues.
 
The Task Force on Guidelines for OPAC Displays was set up by the IFLA
Division of Bibliographic Control, with the Section on Cataloguing as
the lead Section.  The Sections on Cataloguing, Bibliography,
Classification and Indexing, and Information Technology were
represented with members, and commentators were appointed from a number
of Sections and Round Tables.  The first meeting of the Task Force took
place at the 1997 IFLA conference in Copenhagen, with a follow-up
meeting discussing a draft of the guidelines held at the 1998 IFLA
conference in Amsterdam.
 
The draft guidelines were drawn up by Martha Yee, Consultant to the
Task Force, with input from Task Force members and commentators.
 
Please send your comments to me on or before April 30, 1999, upon which
date the review period will be completed.  Following the review,
comments will be considered in revision of this document, and a final
version will be presented to the Standing Committees of the Sections on
Bibliography, Cataloguing, Classification and Indexing, and Information
Technology for a vote.
 
The draft of the guidelines are available on the IFLAnet web site at:
http://www.ifla.org/ifla/VII/s13/guide/opac.htm
The table of contents pages may temporarily be incorrect, since the
change from Word97 to the online version changed page numbers.  It is
anticipated this will be corrected soon.
 
Thank you in advance for your comments.  It is necessary to get a wide
range of input, including comments from people from various cataloguing
traditions and using various formats, in order to make the final
guidelines meet the needs of libraries througout the world.
 
Dorothy McGarry
Chair, Task Force on Guidelines for OPAC Displays
 
 
Please reply to:
 
Dorothy McGarry
PO Box 931119
Los Angeles, CA  90093-1119, USA
telephone: 1-310-825-3438
fax: 1-310-206-3908
Internet: [log in to unmask]
 
 
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