”We migrated to OPALS this year, an open-source ILS which is a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. The transition was incredibly painless and the customer support is prompt, empathetic and thorough.”Academic Librarian
OPALS union catalog empowers libraries in a region, district, or consortium to share their resources. Some OPALS union catalogs manage millions of holdings. The union catalog integrates an almost paperless inter-library loan system. Click on links to view ILL tutorials.
- Web-based searching
- Request item(s)
- Request copies
- Respond & send items
- Print packing slips
- In transit notification
- Renewal requests
- Return item(s)
- Statistics
- z39.50 Client & Server
- Hierarchical filters (ex. Region, District, Libraries within a district)
- Portal editor utilities
These union catalogs are an excellent source of MARC bibliographic records. Librarians consult the catalog for collection development ideas and to compile reading and topic lists for their communities.
Digital / eBook Resources Union Catalogs
OPALS union catalog can be used to manage digital resources acquired for all libraries within a region. This union catalog can implement “Digital Rights Management” where a designated number of simultaneous views have been purchased, regional rights where a common authentication provides access to those resources for all library members within that region, or unlimited access to OER (Open Education Rights) or Creative Commons licensed resources. The digital / eBook resources union catalog can be searched directly and integrated with a discovery search which includes regional and local print, digital and eBook resources.
History & Implementations
The “SCOOLS” initiative pioneered OPALS’ open source library automation community. Six New York State School Library Systems developed a union catalog to provide Web-based, almost paperless, managed interlibrary loan services for approximately 300 schools in their regions. The database now houses more than a million titles (3 million plus holdings), and uses the Internet to communicate and manage the ILL process. In New York State, 29 School Library Systems now use OPALS’ union catalog to provide resource sharing and cataloging resources to over 2500 libraries.
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”MediaFlex, which offers and maintains OPALS for us, has been consistently the most responsive company in terms of customer support. Having worked with them since 2007, we continue to enjoy a close working relationship.”
School Librarian -
”Thanks to OPALS, 85-90% of our incoming back-office tasks are now smoothly handled automatically – against the former only 10%. We did not experience any troubling side-effects of any kind during/after implementation”
Bazh-GFx Academic Librarian”I can't believe that in an era like this I can still pick up the phone and get connected right away with people who are directly running the business and solve the problem right then and there. It is so rare and I deeply appreciate that! I will reach out to a few other small schools in my area and let them know about your company!”
School Librarian -
”We migrated to OPALS this year, an open-source ILS which is a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. The transition was incredibly painless and the customer support is prompt, empathetic and thorough.”
Academic Librarian”MediaFlex, which offers and maintains OPALS for us, has been consistently the most responsive company in terms of customer support. Having worked with them since 2007, we continue to enjoy a close working relationship.”
School Librarian -
”Thanks to OPALS, 85-90% of our incoming back-office tasks are now smoothly handled automatically – against the former only 10%. We did not experience any troubling side-effects of any kind during/after implementation”
Bazh-GFx Academic Librarian”I can't believe that in an era like this I can still pick up the phone and get connected right away with people who are directly running the business and solve the problem right then and there. It is so rare and I deeply appreciate that! I will reach out to a few other small schools in my area and let them know about your company!”
School Librarian -
