At 09:48 AM 06/08/2006, K.G. Schneider wrote:
>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.
Your point is well taken, but we should be
careful not to elevate very simple or "dumbed
down" searches to an ideology. The appropriate
granularity of search and retrieval, represented
by how articulated indexes are and what search
functionality is offered to the user, is affected
by many factors. Among them are the age and
knowledge of the searcher and the nature and size
of the database being searched.
Taking the size and nature of the database into
account, for example, it makes perfect sense that
the LII, which has only tens of thousands of
metadata records covering a multiplicity of
subject areas, would often be most effectively
searched via one keyword anywhere index rather
than via specific subject, title, etc. indexes.
However, databases with millions of records, or
specialized databases with even just hundreds of
thousands of records, would often be most
effectively searched by a multiplicity of
specific indexes, boolean operators, and various
retrieval filters to increase search granularity.
Any catalog, whether existing or "next
generation," should be flexible enough to
accomodate a range of search and retrieval strategies.
David
>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
David Dorman
US Marketing Manager, Index Data
52 Whitman Ave.
West Hartford, Connecticut 06107
dorman_at_indexdata.com
860-389-1568 or toll free 866-489-1568
fax: 860-561-5613
INDEX DATA Means Business
for Open Source and Open Standards
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Received on Thu Jun 08 2006 - 11:44:33 EDT