Terminal Ailments Need Not Be Fatal: A Speculative Assessment of the Impact of Online Public Access Catalogs in Academic Settings.

This paper makes several points about the nature of online public access catalogs (OPAC) that have particular import to reference librarians and those with responsibility for bibliographic instruction. First and foremost, the paper raises concerns about user passivity and loss of control growing out of both the "human-machine interface" ? i.e., screen messages, response time, form of output, etc.?and the larger social context in which this interaction occurs?i.e., the social presentation of computer technol ogy, advertising claims, etc. Second, consideration is given to the tendency of computerized bibliographic sys tems to obfuscate the human origins of library information and organization. It is argued that OPACs are not simply better or faster card catalogs but, rather, present a funda mentally different medium of bibliographic access that will alter the relationship of patrons to the library, librarians, and scholarly work. The point of this discussion is not to counsel against the further development and dissemina tion of OPACs but to encourage public service librarians to think more critically about computers so that these tools might be presented to the patron with a minimum of mysti fication.