In one of her posts K.G. Schneider said:
"In a usability test last year,
using a group that included techies, savvy reference librarians, long-time
LII users, etc., the ONLY person who ever once looked at the help, when
stuck or otherwise, was a 25-year-old soccer mom."
I think this speaks volumes about potential users and who the catalog should be designed for. Librarians, etc. "think" they already know how to search so they will not use help pages. The fact a "soccer mom" is aware of her ignorance and looks for guidance indicates that catalogs need not necessarily be organized to serve the lowest common denominator (in this case "techies, savvy reference librarians...).
It indicates to me that a catalog need not "dumbed down," but rather we need to do a better job educating our users.I think subject access is important, but I agree it should not be one of the primary options.
Also, from a public library standpoint, many of our users come to the library to get a book to read. They use the catalog to determine if it is available here and where to find it. Including external (i.e. not owned by the library or even our consortium) and non-tangible (i.e. database) items will only confuse matters.
Like subject access, external and non-tangible sources should be a secondary item. Think of this scenario. A patron comes to the library looking for "The Tin Drum." The patron does not have a report due or anything, she just wants to read "The Tin Drum" but has forgotten who the author is. Why should she be forced to weed out all the scholarly articles about Gunter Grass by different authors in order to find that the book is under "Grass" in fiction upper level.
I think a librarians mission has changed. Even a few years ago it was to get as much information as possible for our patrons. Now, with the information explosion, our role is more to help filter out irrelevant information. It's easy now, to bury patrons with stuff. But should we?
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William Hegarty
Larchmont Public Library
121 Larchmont Ave.
Larchmont, NY 10538
(914) 834-2281
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Received on Fri Jun 09 2006 - 11:09:56 EDT