Fairfax County Public Library

I chose to evaluate the Fairfax County Public Library website because my friend from high school who lives in Virginia recommended their website to me. She, though not a library student, uses it often, especially their downloadable audiobooks, an application that I am finding increasingly in OPACs. The opening page is straightforward and professional. There are many links to How Tos and Contact Information, even a direct link to Homework Help. I found the page easy to navigate and briefly looked over the various features and applications, such as a Genealogy and History page. I then browsed their OPAC as a guest.

The OPAC (I would put a link here, but I don't think it would work directly; I think you need to go through the Guest link) has a clear organization of search options in well-defined buttons and links without being too confusing. Below the search box were several links to Recommended Reading lists that were based upon awards (Nebula, Pulitzer, Agatha, etc) and best selling lists. The use of previously created lists made more sense to me than the lists found at the JoCo library OPAC that seemed a bit random.

The catalog searching features were fairly innovative; the system used eight search buttons (Words or phrase, Author, Title, Subject, Series, Periodical title, ISBN, Call number) instead of the usual pull-down lists and single search button. A “Power Search” link will take you to the more traditional pull-down lists of search specifications, but I really enjoyed the simplicity of using the direct search buttons. My test search was (as you can see in the picture) for Dickens' Bleak House. (Anyone notice that I'm a Dickens fan?) :) If I immediately hit ENTER after typing my search terms “bleak house” (as is natural for most Internet searchers), the terms automatically were considered keywords and nineteen results came up, only seven of which had anything to do with Dickens. But if I clicked on the Title button with the mouse, I was able to get back only the entries related to the Dickens novel. There is also a Search Within Results option that allows you to specify (this is really cool) the material, from audio to motion picture to boardbook, paperback, or hardcover! The specific capabilities of the search engine were surprising to me; after all, I chose this OPAC rather randomly on the recommendation of a friend, not because of rave reviews of others.

In general, the OPAC was simple and effective for an efficient browsing or searching experience, even for new users. The use of direct search buttons to specify a search was new to me, and I appreciated the efficiency of the approach. I believe this is a great OPAC for a public library.