YOUR OPAC
Your OPAC can form the founation for your HTTP services.
For decades card catalogs were the heart of library services. With the advent of computers the card catalogs were turned into online public access catalogs (OPACs). In most cases, these databases are still of fundamental importance to library services.
As you know, machine readable cataloging (MARC) records make up the content of your OPAC. In 1994 a new MARC field was defined, the 856 field for Electronic Location and Access. (See <URL:http:// www.oclc.org/oclc/bib/856.htm>.) This field describes:
The information required to locate and retrieve an electronic item. Use to provide information that identifies the electronic location containing the items or from which the resource is available. In addition field 856 may be used for linking to an electronic finding aid.One of the most useful subfields of 856 is subfield u. Subfield u is as place holder for the URL of an electronic resource. The existance of the 856 field and subfield u provide the means for cataloging Internet resources.
The development of CGI interfaces to OPACs provide the means to literally link your users with fulltext items from your catalog. One of the very first such interfaces was written by Tim Kambitsch for the DRA system. (See <URL:http:// dmcpl.dayton.lib.oh.us/~kambitsch/niso/lotf.html>.) Since then a number of vendors have created CGI interfaces to thier databases. An incomplete list is available at <URL:http:// www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/alcuin/wwwed-catalogs.html>.
The combination of these standards and technologies allow you to take the "card catalog" where it hasn't been before. Now, more then ever it can become a finding tool as opposed to inventory list. Taking the process one step further, CGI scripts could be placed in 856 fields to provide access to more specialized resources. For example, a library could collect electronic texts, mark them up with SGML, catalog them, and provide access to the texts as well as searching mechanisms completely through the OPAC. Another option is to create a CGI script that download a MARC record in communications format from the OPAC to a librarian's desktop. This would allow libraries to share their MARC record without going through a bibliographic utility. If the MARC records in question described Internet resources, then this might even encourage more libraries to catalog electronic items.