Re: We're going about this all wrong

Heh.
Six years ago in library school, I wrote a research proposal on comparing
Amazon's interface to OPACs. [http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/proposal.htm,
if anyone's remotely interested] Didn't actually have to conduct the
experiment, but wrote up procedures.

And as far as Amazon interfaces are concerned, anybody remember this
experiment of theirs?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/all-stores-ballot.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of David Walker
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 4:22 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] We're going about this all wrong

A lot of bright and talented people have argued for years now that our OPACs
need to be more like Google and Amazon.

I think we need to do the exact opposite: Let us pool our resources and
lobby Google and Amazon to make their systems more like the OPAC!

Here is a demo of what I'm talking about:

http://library2.csusm.edu/amazon/


Just think how much better Amazon could be if they took this approach!
Feel free to file this under "Bad or inappropriate uses of the Amazon Web
Services API." ;-)

--Dave

=========================
David Walker
Web Development Librarian
Library, Cal State San Marcos
760-750-4379
http://public.csusm.edu/dwalker
=========================