There's a library catalog search tool I've been trying and trying to locate for some time now. I don't know what it's called, but here's what I remember:
- It was used at my local library in Connecticut during the early 90s.
- It was designed to be visually friendly, probably with kids/non-tech people in mind (this was at a time when library catalogue-search computers were typically those green-screen WYSE terminals). This system displayed a home screen of large, square, colorful icons. These weren't the usual 32x32 icons used by operating systems, they were maybe twice/three times that size?
You could navigate different genres, drilling down to sub-genres. Each list of sub-genres was also represented by a grid of icons. They must have had hundreds of different icons.
- This ran on a Mac LC. It was very slow. I'm confident that this was not a web-based tool. (I don't think HyperCard supported color at that time, but the system suggested a similar authoring tool, with different cards/pages of icons.)
- I think the name may have been an acronym that was a word, but I'm not sure. I think I remember that the acronym included periods and was something search-related. "S.H.E.R.L.O.C.K" comes to mind, but I'm not getting any results for that.
- This didn't use the standard Mac user interface style. Error/help messages had a bright green picture-frame-style border around them, and an icon of a friendly robot who I think personified the system.
- It was used at my local library in Connecticut during the early 90s.
- It was designed to be visually friendly, probably with kids/non-tech people in mind (this was at a time when library catalogue-search computers were typically those green-screen WYSE terminals). This system displayed a home screen of large, square, colorful icons. These weren't the usual 32x32 icons used by operating systems, they were maybe twice/three times that size?
You could navigate different genres, drilling down to sub-genres. Each list of sub-genres was also represented by a grid of icons. They must have had hundreds of different icons.
- This ran on a Mac LC. It was very slow. I'm confident that this was not a web-based tool. (I don't think HyperCard supported color at that time, but the system suggested a similar authoring tool, with different cards/pages of icons.)
- I think the name may have been an acronym that was a word, but I'm not sure. I think I remember that the acronym included periods and was something search-related. "S.H.E.R.L.O.C.K" comes to mind, but I'm not getting any results for that.
- This didn't use the standard Mac user interface style. Error/help messages had a bright green picture-frame-style border around them, and an icon of a friendly robot who I think personified the system.
Any ideas? I would love to know what this was.