Hi,
Perhaps this is the wrong thread, but one thing that keeps getting in
the way of picking our users is what they're using our systems for.
The next thing getting in the way of defining what the catalog is, is
to know what the users wants from the catalog. And we *do* know that;
collection access, in the most general sense. So they search for
something, and assuming they find it *or*something*else*related* then
what?
Interaction is the key here; they want to bookmark it, create a list,
annotate/comment/blog it, share it, tuck it away for later times, etc.
LibraryThing does a lot of this, so why not start there? What are we
trying to do that LibraryThing doesn't do?
Maybe clustering and relevance ranking and reference librarian boosted
searching with the added LibraryThing / social stuff on top. By this
we're *not* trying to define our user, which, in my humble opinion, is
the right way to go; there won't be less information in the future,
but more. And the more stuff, the easier we need to make it for people
to go from item X to item Y. Relationships to other items, to topics
and subjects, to borrowing or buying spots. At that stage it doesn't
matter if it's a kid or a scholar or average Joe/Jenny.
Regards,
Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
- Frank Herbert
__ http://shelter.nu/ __________________________________________________
Received on Wed Jun 07 2006 - 20:52:08 EDT