Online Public Access Catalogs

This was an interesting week for me. I had never thought much about OPAC systems (other than the one we use at school) until I was forced to look at different types. I never knew there were so many types and options out there. We use Follett Circulation Plus at my school and I felt that it was fine until now because I didn't know what other systems were like. Now that I have seen different systems, I'm not sure that what we have is the best. I chose to research Alexandria and there were a lot of things I liked about it- mainly it seemed very suited to very young users (I work in a K-3 school) with it large, clear icons for easy searching. I also liked that it had cover art for many titles, summaries, reviews, e-books, and related websites. We don't have the web option at the elementary level, but do at the middle and high school. I never even knew about that until this week and I think that it's great to be able to connect to a related website right away. I found out my information about Alexandria from their website and through the listerv on MSLA, which I finally joined. I have to admit that I didn't speak with a rep or find out how much the system cost because the librarian I work with didn't want me to contact them directly because we are not in a position financially to change systems and she didn't want them calling and bugging her all the time once they thought we might be interested in it. But I was able to try it out online and I thought that it had a lot of great features. Like I said, Follett does what we need it to do, but Alexandria looks a lot more fun and exciting and has a lot more great features.