Resource Discovery Services versus OPACs in Information Searching

Abstract

In order to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of Resource Discovery Services (RDS) and Online Public Access Catalogues (OPAC), we selected three universities from Spain which met the following requirements: 1) they taught Library and Information Science Studies, since our expertise in this scientific field would enable us to determine the relevance of the results retrieved, and 2) they had implemented different tools. We conducted several subject and author searches in RDS and OPAC, with the overall objective of exploring the efficiency of the search process and the relevance of the results retrieved when using each tool. The specific objectives were: to determine the comprehensiveness of the relevant results retrieved in a parallel search of OPAC and Resource Discovery Services; to analyze these results; to identify the filter functions for selection in RDS and OPAC; to determine the ease with which the results could be refined and/or the search could be widened by making use of facets, indexes, or advanced search features; and to assess the implementation and usefulness of recommendations of related documents and user opinions/reviews in the form of tags, comments and ratings.