Need OPAC for Bible college/church library

For the past few years I have been migrating our collection of approx. 17,000 vols. from a card catalog into an automated system that does not include a web-based catalog (It can be searched only on two public computers in our Library). Most of our students now use their own laptops instead of the library computers, so I'd like to make our automated catalog available to them and other church members via the Internet. The vendor of our current system wants to sell us an upgraded version that does include web access, but it's much too expensive and would require new hardware. Can anyone recommend a simple OPAC suitable for a small Bible college/church library? We just need a searchable online database that will accept imported MARC cataloging records and doesn't include circulation functions. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide! -- Ruth in Colorado

You may wish to investigate OPALS-NA, open source software originally developed for schools (& widely used in public and private schools in New York) In addition it is also used by a number of churches, synagogues, historical and museum libraries, and a few small academics. Our church library initially implemented OPALS as an affordable way to get our catalog on the Internet, but we quickly found that it was too difficult to maintain two different databases. It wasn't long before we scrapped our old system.

OPALS is entirely browser-based. Most customers choose to have their systems hosted by Media Flex, developer of the software. For more information, see http://www.opals-na.org

Other software you may wish to investigate is OurLibraryOnline: http://ourlibraryonline.com
It was mentioned last week on churchlibrarians.ning.com
and referenced in several other online locations, but I have no further information about it. Library Concepts is the supplier.

Pat in SC