Heritage OPAC
This page is currently being revised, as the Heritage OPAC and Heritage Online now share the same interface and the majority of functionality. For further information please visit the online page.
There are two ways in which users can search the Heritage catalogue: the standard OPAC , which is accessible via the 'Enquiry' menu in Heritage and requires the user to have access to the Heritage dataserver; and Heritage Online, which enables the library to offer the catalogue either on the Internet or an Intranet for searching via a browser. In nearly all cases the functionality is identical, but a few facilities remain exclusive to either environment. We are intending to provide a single interface as part of a forthcoming upgrade, which has the advantage that there is only one interface to customise if you wish to apply your own corporate style to the search environment.
Information about Heritage Online
The Heritage OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) is simple to use but with superb levels of functionality. The challenge to our design team was to create a clear layout, uncluttered and without rows of bewildering buttons. We wanted to encourage the casual enquirer to search with confidence, but also provide sufficient depth for the demanding researcher.
Searches can be carried out on single words or phrases and can involve truncation or wildcards e.g. Legal* will pick up legality as well as legal. Boolean operators can join together search terms. More complicated searches are handled by bracketing parts of searches and using quotation marks to force exact word order on phrase searches. However, for the large majority of users a simple search will suffice. Results can be re-sorted at any time and a wide range of layouts is available for summary and detailed results displays. Enlarge and Reduce icons are available, making the text easier to read for visually-impaired users. In addition, the terms used in a search are highlighted in both the brief and full search results screens
The thesaurus is a important part of the opac where it can be used to guide the user towards terms which might reveal more results than those they are trying. The word list (see the General Search window above) provides immediate feedback about misspellings or words that simply do not exist in the catalogue.
Select any word or phrase from the Detailed Results screen and click the right mouse button and a new search will run on the selected word(s).
URLs, Wordprocessor documents,spreadsheets, ejournals and many other items can be viewed from the OPAC. Clicking on the show button lists out any associated items which may then be viewed by clicking on them.
For multi-site libraries there are options available to allow some searches to be filtered for a single library thus keeping users to the local stock whilst still allowing others search across the whole of the catalogue. Alternatively, results can be sorted according to site first.
Having found the items that they are searching for, users can then print off, email the results for use in bibliographies or in other documents.
There are times when it is preferable to search specific fields rather than across whole records. The 'Advanced Search' facility in Heritage enables the more sophisticated user to carry out very specific searches. The fields that are available for searching are set by the library itself.
The OPAC facility includes giving readers access to their own information via the Reader information form. Here they can also use the SDI facility to set up their own areas of interest and hence be notified automatically of new items arriving which might be of interest to them.
Other facilities are provided as part of the standard Heritage OPAC, such as the Library Floorplan, which enables library staff to provide a map of their library sites. Users can then choose a subject area from the index provided, and a flashing icon will direct them to where the relevant items are located in the library.
Z39.50
Z39.50 is a standard that has been developed to allow one or more library catalogues to be searched simultaneously using a single piece of search software. This searching is typically carried out across the Internet. The user can specify which library catalogues they wish to search and the results of the search are retrieved from all the different sources and collated into one list.
There are two elements to Z39.50: the client and the server. Each library that wishes to publish its catalogue must have the Z39.50 server running. Any end user wishing to search various catalogues must then run a client and tell it where to find the various catalogues that they wish to search. There are various clients, and they are typically free. They are usually independent and not browser-based so you need to install them on your PC
Z39.50 would be hosted on Windows 2000 as a service - it listens out on its own IP port so there may be firewall implications.
An optional
Z39.50 server module is available for Heritage. Our development
is compliant with the 1995 version of Z39.50 and can be
used with proprietary brands of client. We anticipate developing towards SRW in the future, but have no timetable for this development as yet. We are keen to make greater use of a Web-service instead of Z39.50, with the information being delivered in XML. We have already made use of SOAP in our Quickcat Online module.