It is commonly presumed that if library users are provided with more
information about the books they find in an online public access catalog (OPAC)
or card catalog, they will experience greater satisfaction with the OPAC, as well as
with the library's collection.' For example, in a commentary about the future
design of OPACs, David Tyckoson contends that "more" is better and he states
that . . the more information available for the user to judge the content o f the
source, the more valuable the bibliographic record becomes as a facsimile o f the
original." (p. 20)2 In the present, however, the traditional card catalog and OPAC
often include only such standard bibliographic information as title, author,
publisher, pagination, and assigned subject headings to assist end-users in making
their assessments of books. When end-users examine an OPAC display, they
usually make a judgment about the usefulness of a book based on this standard
bibliographic information, unless they choose to take an additional step such as