JOHN MARQUETTE wrote:
> That said, if a "library" is a searchable repository of items,
> amazon.com has probably done the best job of creating a librarian-free
> search-and-retrieve system.
What leads us to believe that Amazon searches are successful? I
personally have only ever done known item searches on Amazon, and for
the types of materials that I know they are likely to have (books, CDs,
software), so I pre-select my information seeking in a way that may make
Amazon seem more successful. How well does it work for subject
searching? Remember that their full text search (and the "search inside
the book") is available only for a small portion of the items listed in
Amazon. (I thought it interesting when they first started up that
feature and announced that they could see the sales of those books with
the "look inside" capability go up. Then they never mentioned it again.
If it had been widely successful, I think we would have heard from their
PR department.) Amazon includes a smattering of articles (and no
explanation of which ones you can expect to find there), the occasional
government document, no web pages, and not a whole lot that is available
for free.
We really should be careful about extrapolating from a system that works
well to sell things that it would also work well as a library. As a good
example of this, click on "help" on Amazon. It's all about order,
shipping options, passwords ... not a word about searching.
kc
> Their search tools are so good that they
> even provide snippets of content to assist "readers" in making
> selections.
>
> Amazon's user interface and multi-format bibliographic databases are
> essential tools for me when I assist a patron. My search might only be
> to determine that a book exists or a future publication date, but it is
> as broad in scope as my local ILS is limited to our own collection.
>
> WorldCat and amazon.com do a remarkably similar job of locating
> materials. WorldCat provides richer metadata in MARC format (good for
> us), while amazon.com seems to function well with publisher-provided
> data (good for patron). Both systems provide a customer/patron access
> to desired materials, but only amazon.com provides the same interface
> anywhere in the world.
>
> An experienced patron can use his or her library's ILS to locate and
> request materials. A really experienced patron can perform the same
> function in a neighboring agency's library with a different ILS.
> Anybody with a keyboard and a web browser can use amazon.com. And so,
> the librarians have already been locked out of the best search engine.
> And patrons have their books delivered to their homes.
>
> As we look to the next generation catalog and library, we should be
> looking at material delivery methods as well.
>
> John Marquette
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Mon Jun 12 2006 - 18:33:03 EDT