The Impact of Web Search Engines on Subject Searching in OPAC Holly Yu

(CSULA) and studies the effects of implementing a Web-based OPAC along with interface changes. The authors find that user success in subject searching remains problematic. A major increase in the frequency of searches that would have been more successful in resources other than the library catalog is noted over the time period 2000–2002. The authors attribute this increase to the prevalence of Web search engines and suggest that metasearching, relevance-ranked results, and relevance feedback (" more like this ") are now expected in user searching and should be integrated into online catalogs as search options. I n spite of many studies and articles on Online Public Access Catalogs (OPAC) over the last twenty-five years, many of the original ideas about improving user success in searching library catalog have yet to be implemented. Ironically, many of these techniques are now found in Web search engines. The popularity of the Web appears to have influenced users' mental models and thus their expectations and behavior when using a Web-based OPAC interface. This study examines current search behavior using transaction-log analysis (TLA) of subject searches when zero-hits are retrieved. It considers some of the features of Web search engines and online bookstores and suggests future enhancements for OPACs. Many studies have been published since the 1980s centering on the OPAC. Seymour and Large and Beheshti provide in-depth overviews on OPAC research from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s.