I think that in the age of Google and Amazon, these questions - who us the
primary user and what exactly is a catalog, may be irrelevant.
The "catalog" needs to be effective and guide the "user" to relevant
information, or give him/her additional options (Google, Amazon, etc) -
other similar items, imediate option to hold, recall, get item from
somewhere else....
Personally, and from experience, I think that we built these "catalogs" for
librarians and in many cases for "catalogers" - for a long time we thought
that we knew what was good for the user, which may be one of the reasons we
struggle now to make them more Google or Amazon like.
Possibly, vendors should have listened more to the "end users" then to us.
Amos
--On Wednesday, June 07, 2006 7:49 AM -0400 Eric Lease Morgan
<emorgan_at_ND.EDU> wrote:
> Who is the PRIMARY user of this thing we call the "catalog"?
>
>
> As a librarian with the words "information architecture" in my title,
> I always ask myself three questions whenever I deal with an
> information system: 1) who are the users, and what do they want, 2)
> what is the purpose of this thing, and how does it fit into the
> context of my organization, and 3) what represents the content of the
> system?
>
> When asking about users I must remind myself of a number of things.
> First I have limited resources, and therefore I can not be all things
> to all people. I must make choices. I must prioritize. A "catalog"
> may have many users, but some of them are more equal than others. For
> example, a public library has a responsibility to the the local
> population before they have a responsibility to a remote population.
> Similarly, a special library in a company serves the needs of the
> company, not the public, and certainly not other companies. College/
> university libraries, while having some public service components,
> are probably there to serve the students, faculty, and staff before
> they serve the general population. After I define/articulate the
> primary users of the system, then I go about discovering what those
> people's needs are.
>
> So, who is the primary audience of the "catalog"? While we might all
> have different audiences in mind, I'd be willing to bet that the
> primary audience of the catalog is NOT librarians.
>
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
> University Libraries of Notre Dame
>
> I'm hiring a Senior Programmer Analyst.
> See http://dewey.library.nd.edu/morgan/programmer/.
Amos Lakos
Librarian, Rosenfeld Management Library
UCLA - Anderson School of Management
110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951460
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1460
Phone: (310) 794-4381
Fax: (310) 825-4835
E-mail: aalakos_at_library.ucla.edu
Web: http://personal.anderson.ucla.edu/amos.lakos/index.html
Received on Wed Jun 07 2006 - 13:40:17 EDT