what’s with OPACs lately? an article by Andrew Pace

I have always enjoyed Andrew Pace’s writing and his Technically Speaking column in American Libraries. This month he talks a little bit about the awkward acronym that reflects the awkward systems that are OPACs.

I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records; nor should any patron be satisfied with even a bona fide answer to that question.