[oak perl] Oakland Public Library electronic catalog still has issues(? ... !)

[Michael Paoli]

I think this was brought up at our last meeting.
I did hear mention on the news some week(s) ago about them doing an
upgrade - they weren't specific, but they did mention upgrading to
"broadband".

They've got a "Network Upgrade Completed" link on their main page:
http://oaklandlibrary.org/PR/pr070506networkupgrade.html
Looks like they've still got other major changes they've got targeted
to complete by the end of the year.

Well, ... I figure between 4 and 5 A.M. on a weekday probably isn't a
peak usage period for them, ... but when I try to search - either
their basic title search, or exact title, looking for
Computer-Related Risks
in both cases it eventually times out and gives me an error
indicating that the search timed out, ... and in both
cases the timeout period is longer than I could open a physical card
catalog drawer and find out whether or not that particular title was
in the catalog or not.  Their "Power Search", where I can give it more
restrictive criteria (title word(s) risks AND author neumann) also
likewise eventually times out.

Back in, I think it was mid to late 1980s, if I recall correctly,
they had direct public dial-up access to their catalog system -
strictly text (terminal emulation) based, ... but at least that
worked.

It seems there must still be something pretty nastily wrong with
their system or how it was put together or (not) maintained to have
behavior that's this poor, if this is a typical example.

Hopefully it will be "all better" by the end of the year.

The Berkeley and San Francisco and San Jose public library catalogs
are quite on-line searchable and respond in quick order, as is the
University of California system-wide catalog system (and the first two
don't have that title, but the latter two do).