Abstract

Opac has been in the eye of the hurricane for a number of years, evolving to provide management programs with more functionality in terms of accessibility, understood as the capacity to recover information. It is logical to imagine that this has been for the user’s benefit, but a thorough analysis reveals that the Opacs have deficiencies in that arena. They must be truly open to the user, as the backbone of information access, bibliographically or otherwise, so the user participates in his or her own growth and enrichment. Some of the weaknesses in the great majority of current catalogues are discussed, offering some paths toward the intersection between technological innovations that could be introduced and the social participation that could occur under the umbrella of the currently popular Web 2.0.