Opac Online
VOCE.EU offers you Opac Online: the best solution to bring your catalogue and thesaurus to the internet.
Especially built for use with Adlib Information System's catalogues, Opac Online integrates seamlessly with the most popular library software. Because of its modular architecture it is however also easy to use Opac Online with catalogues from different vendors.
Opac Online is completely adaptable to your wishes and company style. It is very easy to add Opac Online in to your existing web site.
By using cutting-edge indexing and search technology, Opac Online is extremely fast and offers advanced features. An overview of these features is here.
It goes without saying that Opac Online can be used with all modern web browsers. The application can be hosted in any operating system with no effort. Opac Online is open source, which means that you are in total control.
Opac Online gives you for a small fraction of the costs a multiplicity of possibilities, compared to our competitors.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
>> To who is Opac Online useful?
Opac Online is an application to make your library catalogue and thesaurus searchable. The standard version of Opac Online is suited to catalogues by Adlib Information Systems, the most popular system; it is however simple to use with catalogues from other vendors.
>> Why is Opac Online a good choice to make my catalogue searchable?
Reliability: Opac Online is built using technologies that are proven to be suited to the most critical enterprise applications.
Flexibility: Opac Online is delivered to you exactly customized according to your wishes.
Performance: Opac Online's speed outperforms comparable applications by a long shot.
>> What are the requirements to the hosting environment for Opac Online?
Opac Online is a Java web application, that is hosted in a servlet container like Tomcat, JBoss, etc. The servlet container should support Sun's Servlet Specification 2.4. The host's operating system is irrelevant: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, ... Opac Online can run without any modifications.
If desired we will arrange cheap and reliable Tomcat hosting for you.
>> Can Opac Online also serve an international, multilingual audience?
By default Opac Online is delivered in a bilingual version (English and Dutch). However, it is very easy to add any other languages.
>> How can Opac Online integrate with our existing web site?
Opac Online can be displayed in an iframe in your website; through the use of CSS your company style can be applied.
>> What is the performance of Opac Online searches?
A search command in a catalogue with over 100.000 records takes on average 10 milliseconds.
Features
Default catalogue search - searches all fields;
Users can select the fields in which to search;
Advanced query syntax with wildcard support;
Possibility of Fuzzy Search, using the so-called Levenshtein distance;
Further search options, such as selection of language, material, is the resource online, etc;
Thesaurus search with an autocomplete-while-you-type feature (compare the Google toolbar);
Search the catalogue from the thesaurus;
Sorting of search results by relevance, title, author, date of publication, or editor;
Support is possible for all languages, including non-Western alphabets like Japanese or Arabic;
Optional: use of so-called "stemmers", that for example select records containing "done" when you search for "do";
Optional: use of so-called "exclusion lists" to filter out words like "the" that are not very relevant;
The user can download or email search results in a variety of file formats such as PDF or XML.
Automatic suggestions when a search command returns no, or very few, results (compare Google's "did you mean...");
Very convenient follow-up searches on keyword, author or editor, from the search results;
The user can easily repeat searches from the search history;
Search results can be saved to a "basket";
Highlighting of search terms in the fields used in the search;
A lot of explanation to the user about all its features on the Opac Online site itself;
Accessibility
Opac Online is built in such a way that maximum acessibility is achieved: all features are usable through keyboard input, and blind users can use your site aided by screenreaders.
Technology
Opac Online is built in Java, the most popular programming environment for enterprise quality software. Through the use of Java the application can be hosted without modifications in any operating system; so you are not tied to Microsoft.
The indexing and search engine uses the powerful library Lucene (just like for example Wikipedia does). Lucene's extended user base and open source development community guarantee an extensively tested and search engine library with excelent performance.
The Opac Online web pages aer built completely to the standards for XHTML and CSS. Hereby an extended list of browsers are supported, and through the use of CSS it is very easy to make changes to the look and feel of your Opac Online.
The Opac Online site also uses modern web design techniques like Ajax; an example of this is the auto-complete input field in the Thesaurus Search.
Open Source
Opac Online is delivered completely Open Source, and uses itself strictly Open Source libraries.
That is how you are in full control over the application and if you so desire, you can make changes at will.
The Opac Online sources are delivered with extensive documentation that enable a programmer to start working with it with no learning curve.
Security
The Opac Online application, by default, is an open search function for your catalogue over the internet.
It is however also possible to restrict access to your site to authenticated users (with user name and password).
In case your catalogue contains sensitive data you may also choose to provide access to your site using the secure https protocol.
Adlib Internet Server
Adlib Information Systems themselves also offer a solution to make catalogues searchable over the internet, the Adlib Internet Server.
We believe you are much better off with Opac Online because of the following reasons:
Opac Online offers more useful features to the users;
Opac Online can be customized completely to your wishes, both in terms of its lay-out, as in its feature set;
Opac Online gives you complete control over your application through its Open Source distribution;
Opac Online can be hosted on any operating system; Adlib Internet Server is hosted on Microsoft's IIS, and so pins you to a Microsoft host;
Opac Online is available for a small fraction of the cost of Adlib Internet Server.
Licence
When you order Opac Online you receive a broad licence that enables you to to practically with it; you can modify and distribute the application at will. Copyrights however remain VOCE.EU's property.
Product history
- Lucene
- XHTML
- XMLBeans binding
- In-memory search engine
- Castor XML binding
Online Demo
You can view Opac Online at your leisure on our demo site.
The demo site uses an indexed Adlib catalogue containing over 100.000 records and a thesaurus of about 10.000 keywords.
Opac Online is situated in the content pane (the middle part) of the demo site. The sections to the left, to the top and to the right of it are not part of the Opac Online application. This is to illustrate including Opac Online in another (your!) web site.
The contents of the titles and abstracts in the catalogue is randomly put together from English texts in the public domain, such as the works of Shakespeare and Darwin. Authors were randomly assigned using a list of authors we have found on the internet; the keywords were assigned in like manner.
The Japanese version is machine-translated from the English, so do not expect correct Japanese. This version is purely an illustration of the possibility to display the application in non-Western languages.
Contact
You can reach VOCE.EU 7 days a week
.. by email: voce.eu@gmail.com
.. by phone: +33-6-67871333.