Carolina Gregui

ILS vs. DBMS in Latin American Web OPACs: Discriminant Analysis Applied to User Interface

This chapter reports on the research project “Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) in Mercosur” Project F054, (UBACYT Scientific Program 20042007, Universidad de Buenos Aires). The aim of the project was to investigate the use of new information technologies in libraries in a selected geographical grouping. The project revealed that only minimal services were available through most online public access catalogs in libraries of Mercosur member and associate countries. Further, the survey indicated that many of them were in an early stage of implementation (Barber et al. 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008). According to international trends catalog functions should be based on user needs. Consequently, results provided by this research offer relevant information that could be taken into account by libraries in the region when software and functionalities were being evaluated and/or considered. Given the many challenges that libraries face in the information age, the aim of Project F036 – “Online public access catalogs (OPACs) in Latin America” (UBACYT Scientific Program 2008-2010, Universidad de Buenos Aires)