Re: who is the primary user?

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Our library catalog is used
daily by our patrons – and without it people wouldn’t be able to find
anything. They use it to find books, to access our electronic resources, to
check their records, etc. Statistics even show that students are searching
for items more than ever. Yet, they also show that they are using subject
searches most often – and having difficulty finding information that way.

———-
In 2002, one of the first modifications to Librarians' Internet Index on my
watch—a data-driven decision based on what I saw from search log analysis
generated for another purpose—was to *remove* the options to refine the
search on the front page by subject, title, URL, description, and I forget
what. Search failures dropped a whole bunch. I forget the percentage, I can
look it up, it was high double digits.

Someone then said I was Dumbing Down LII. I remember sharing that with Roy
Tennant, whose comment was, "good." It has kinda been my goal with our
project to keep dumbing it down until even I can use it successfully all the
time.

I also remember a guy from a NJ system who in the late 1990s often said he
wanted to remove the subject search from the public's view of the catalog.
The fact is that if you designed a catalog interface from the user backwards
you'd at best offer subject searching buried on an "advanced" page, with a
warning/explanation. Putting "subject" searching on the main page is part of
the collective denial we're in that users understand how and when to use it.

————

My comment about library staff being the primary audience was worded badly.
I meant that in its current iteration it is most intelligible to library
staff – and in that way I think they are the audience that understands it
and uses it to its fullest capacity. I guess I see the catalog as having
been designed for use by library staff – and that seems to be one it biggest
problems because we are not the primary audience.

—-
Indeed! Not only that—but often librarians overestimate their own ability to
successfully use features—or whether the features will be used at all—or
whether they are even needed.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.com