SOPAC: Integrating Online Access to your Library's Biblio Records with your Drupal Website
Submitted by effulgentsia on July 7, 2009 - 20:28
Your session in a few words:
See examples of recent work being done on the SOPAC project and its usage on live library websites
Track:
Business development and strategy
Session Type:
Lecture
Level of expertise:
Intermediate
Language:
English A huge frustration for many libraries is that their OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) is a completely different website than their primary website. This results in library website visitors effectively leaving the library's primary website when they want to search for a book or place a hold. Also, many OPAC vendors don't provide much ability to customize the user interface or look-and-feel of the OPAC. And many OPAC vendors haven't yet caught up to Web 2.0 and the desire for website users to share content such as ratings and reviews with each other. Wouldn't it be great if you could have OPAC functionality as a Drupal module that integrates into your Drupal website, is customizable via the theme layer, and allows user-generated content to enhance the catalog data? The SOPAC module does exactly this!
In this session, attendees will:
- Get an overview of the SOPAC components and what's needed to have SOPAC running within a Drupal website, connecting to your ILS.
- See examples of SOPAC in-use on several library websites.
- Learn about the state of the SOPAC project and where it's headed.
- Learn about what's easy and what's hard to do with SOPAC.
- Have an opportunity to ask questions of the presenters and fellow attendees to benefit from group experience.
This session will be of most benefit to people who already have basic familiarity with Drupal, but coding skills are not required. If you're brand new to Drupal or to using Drupal for library websites, you may be interested in the Open Up the Library session as a way to get up to speed.
This session will be co-presented by Alex Bronstein and Paul Poulain. Alex Bronstein is a Drupal programmer and co-founder of CraftySpace, a Drupal consulting and development company, and of YourLibrarySite.com, a division of CraftySpace focused on Drupal development for libraries. He is a member of the SOPAC development group, and is currently working on research into providing additional integration of SOPAC with other Drupal modules.
Paul Poulain is a Koha programmer, and co-founder of BibLibre, a library and OpenSource dedicated company. BibLibre mainly focus on Koha and Drupal, and is author of the Koha connector for SOPAC, as well as some improvements in SOPAC itself and the French translation of SOPAC.
