OPAC: opaque or Open, Public, Accessible and Co‐operative? Some developments in natural language processing Available to Purchase

Current OPACs show their weakness in terms of ease of use and comprehension of user requests, and more generally in man/machine dialogue. Most OPAC searches are for subjects and these give the word results. Natural language processing techniques exist to reduce these difficulties. In France, natural language processing has been used to access the yellow pages (headings) of the French phone directory and the telematics services directory; examples are included. No doubt the future library systems will use these techniques to make the new OPACs really Open, Public, Accessible and Co‐operative (user‐friendly).