International Journal of Engineering Technology and Management Sciences Website: ijetms.in Issue: 4 Volume No.6 Aug-Sept – 2022 DOI:10.46647/ijetms.2022.v06i05.005 ISSN: 2581-4621 @2022, IJETMS | Impact Factor Value: 5.672 | Page 32 OPAC:Catalogue of Modern Library Javitri Panwar 1 ,Basant Bais 2 1 Department of Livestock Products Technology, CVAS, RAJUVAS, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India 2 Professor and Head, Department of Livestock Products Technology, CVAS, RAJUVAS, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India Abstract: OPAC stands for “Open Public Access Catalogue”. The online public access catalogue depicts the online library database of resources like books, journals, newspapers, e-books, etc. The students can get access to any books as well as e-content from anywhere & at any time with the OPAC .All they need is to search for keywords such as – name of the book, title, author’s name, volume number, and much more. Thus, OPAC can contribute to students’ success in the long run by helping them carry on their e-learning journey. The purpose of OPAC or the Online Public Access Catalogue to make the digital resources search faster & easier for the students by offering a digital library catalogue Keywords: Information Retrieval, Database, Academic Libraries, Library Users. Introduction: OPAC is an essential information retrieval tool to help academic library users to locate the library resources efficiently and effectively; it is a singular tool for accessing and properly utilising printed collection of a library. It is an entry point and a guided pathway to a library’s treasures. “An OPAC provides the users the benefits of online access to the library’s catalogue. It allows them to search and retrieve records depending on the underlying library management system, it also offers several facilities like online reservation, borrower status checking and so on”.1 It is no longer merely an inventory, but an investigative tool for locating what the library owns. At the same time, the internet also provides various options to academic community for obtaining information. Internet search engines, Google in particular, have impacted upon users today who are accustomed to the simplicity of search engines. Challenged with the Web and the Web-savvy users, most libraries have been facing difficulties in trying to adjust and reinvent the services they provide for them. The changing trends in Web search engines have driven the new generation of users to explore information themselves and seek personal help only at times when they were stuck. OPACs had been criticised for its difficult use and poor search capabilities and resultant output for more than 30 years and more so after the advent of the web. Consequently, libraries need to devote more attention to their most important reference tool – the OPAC.2 Interestingly, users had been satisfied to a great extent with OPACs in the early nineties, but the situation changed drastically with the popularity of the web search engines because they provided the opportunity for easier and quicker means of finding information.3 In addition, the search results produced by search engines are presented using relevance ranking system which have proved more user-friendly than those of current OPACs. 4 In a recent study, Kumar 5 pointed out that a majority of the users performed searches on OPAC in a manner similar to popular search engines. Besides, they could not have known the differences between the inner-workings of OPAC and common search engines like Google Over the time OPAC improved its functions, but most of the improvements were merely superficial and not of the core functions that would actually have an impact on the user search behaviour. 6-7 Presently, the library community is pondering how OPAC can be made a single entry point or portal to find information available on resources inside libraries and even outside libraries, for example e-resources on the Web. In recent years, a large number of OPAC