ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Online Public Access Catalogue or OPAC. It deals with an overview of the search flow, keyword searching, authority searching, followed by sections dealing with other aspects of the OPAC. There are three basic searches, usually available, on an OPAC: Authority, Keyword and Exact match. The system generally ignores punctuation such as commas, periods, accent marks, multiple spaces and so forth. The inclusion or exclusion of punctuation usually does not affect the outcome of the search. Bibliographic (BIB) Summary screens display condensed bibliographic information for each title found during a search. If the system finds only one title during a search, the item’s full BIB display appears instead. The format for the Bib summary screen is set by each library with the assistance of Dynix. The typical screen includes four basic parts: search request, display heading, additional information and total number of titles received.
