New OPAC

Good news: we've got the TEST versions of OPAC and the resource discovery module, working and they look quite nice.

Bad news: we've had to postpone the training for the OPAC as we need to incorporate the change in the corporate branding that should be coming on stream this summer. Essentially, we'll be going live at the end of July with an OPAC pretty much out of the box. Perhaps the only "radical" novelty we'll be delivering at this stage is the range of subcatalogues we'll be presenting:

• The "vanilla" catalogue"
• Children's Library
• Local Studies
• The Co-operative Collection - very much an unsung resource, especially in this International Year of Co-operation
• The Maskew Collection - a special collection of English literature and philosophy funded by the bequest of a local lady

At the moment we're only doing this by imposing filters on the library catalogue, not doing anything in the way of additional information and canned searches. This is frustrating, but I guess unavoidable, but we'll just have to do as best as we can. I'm looking forward to getting the training as there's quite a lot of possibility lurking in these two customer interfaces, particularly Sorcer which has a lot of scope for creating personalised learning/reading environments.