A pilot survey of some one thousand online public access catalog users conducted as part of the Online Public Access Catalog Evaluation Project contains findings of interest to librarians concerned with the selection or design of public access catalog facilities. Respondents were patrons of public and academic libraries. The project is being administered by the Council on Library Resources.
When asked to choose from a list of thirteen additional features which might be of fered in a computer catalog the most popular choices along with the percentage of the respondents who gave that choice were: the ability to search a books table of contents, summary or index (47 percent); the ability to view a list of words related to search words (40 percent); the ability to print search results (31 percent); and the ability to search by any word in a subject heading (28 percent).
In relation to service improvement, respondents most frequently selected statements that indicated the desire for: more terminals (41 percent); more of a library's books to be included in the computer catalog (38 percent); the inclusion of more kinds of materials such as journals, films, maps, etc. in the computer catalog (38 percent); and terminals to be available in places other than the library building (28 percent).
None of these desiderata is likely to surprise librarians in institutions which already have online public access catalogs; however, the results should be of interest to librarians who are currently planning automated library systems which incorporate, or may later be expanded to incorporate, an online public access catalog.
