UCLA

Describes the work of the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Task Force on Guidelines for OPAC Displays. Includes a history of the project, a statement of goals, a description of the audience, scope, and organization of the guidelines, and a brief list of the principles being proposed in the current draft. Also includes a discussion of standards that are still lacking, and controversial issues that have arisen in the course of designing the guidelines. These include 1) whether the default subarrangement under a subject heading should be author-title work identifier (main entry) or date; 2) whether the default single-record display should ever be abbreviated; 3) whether sorting elements should be definable and operable in displays; 4)whether work displays should include separate displays of related works and works about the work; 5) whether location and format information should be provided in the initial summary display list; 6) the degree to which systems should be designed to deal with large retrievals; 7) the value of work headings; 8) and the extent to which it is possible to generalize display guidelines internationally.