For the sake of my own interest, this week I decided to look at some international OPAC's to learn a little more about the transferability of user principles, content and arrangement principles, as well as issues associated with accessibility and dissemination. Several large German institutions have created the ProbadoProject (Prototypical Operation of Common Documents) to try to establish commonality in best practices and metadata extraction for non-text based digitization projects in an effort to homoganize the country's digital libraries. One of the key participants in this project is University of Bonn. So I went to the school's website to gain a little better understanding of how German university OPAC's may differ from more familiar American one's.
One of the overriding OPAC principles is that of designing display interfaces in a way that best meets the needs of institution's specific users. Because most of the users of Bonn's OPAC are inevitably German students and faculty members, it is interesting that the site offers instructions in both German and English. This also allowed me to explore the site because I don't speak German. The fact that the English is offered suggests that Bonn must consider English speakers (students and researchers) an important user group. I approach my critique from this perspective to assess how this user group's needs are met. Although most search function keys are offered in English, result content is generally in German, thus limiting accessibility to English speakers. The main exception to this rule is site's standard search function, which not only offers search results in a variety of categories. These include the familiar title and author searches as well as free search (which I deduced to be like a keyword) and a pull-down menu of search functions with specific catalogue information (such as ISBN.) Search results display in English, with some interesting iconography, and options for finding, reserving, or ordering are also displayed as "more information." In all, the site adhered very closely to U.T.'s OPAC, and as a non-German speaker, I was surprised that it was actually somewhat easier to navigate Bonn's system than our own.
The major issue I have with Bonn's OPAC is the apparent lack of non-text based materials. Because of its association with the ProbadoProject, I fully expected to find an on-line catalogue of music, graphics, etc. However, I was unable to find such a collection. However, this may could be due to a number of reasons. Such collections may not be accessible due to copyright or related issues (i.e. only accessible with an institutional log-on), because digitization of these materials is still in a theoretical stage at Bonn (although this seems doubtful), or it could be a design principle flaw (thus not allowing this type of search-ability to English speakers.)
Beyond these issues, it is apparent to me that Bonn has made a conscious design, content, arrangement, and accessibility decisions to meet the needs of its users, despite international differences.
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