While we're talking all 80/20 here... how many of your users lament
the passing of the 'card catalog'? Would you really suggest bringing
that back for the, what, 10% that pines for it?
People cling to irrational things. Even if a 'simple search' were to
naturally bring back as good a set of results as the most specific
'advanced search' people would complain about the 'lack of
granularity'.
I still say: don't design for the edge cases, if they're unhappy with
NGC 1.0, we still have our old web opac that they can use.
-Ross.
On 6/12/06, Jonathan Rochkind <jonathan_at_dnil.net> wrote:
> I think we need to be more specific with these things. Do we know
> that "80%" of users are happy with Amazon's interface? Not really,
> of course, but judging by their popularity, we can assume that many
> users are happy _enough_ with it---for the task of finding a book to
> buy.
>
> But what is it they like about it? What is it about Amazon that is
> better than Random Sample Library Catalog? Ideally, we'd actually
> gather some data from actual users; but we can potentially accomplish
> something just by speculating too, so long as we speculate humbly
> knowing that we might be wrong and looking at the other side. But
> it's not enough just to assume 'we need to be more like Amazon', for
> all possible values of 'like Amazon'.
>
> After all, what is it that makes Amazon different from a typical
> library catalog? Now they've got some full text, but that's a fairly
> recent phenomenon (and in my personal experience, it doesn't help
> much for most of my typical searches)---and the talk of "we must be
> like Amazon" began before they had fulltext. So what is it that
> Amazon does? Just provide un-fielded keyword searching of metadata?
> We can do that--we DO do that. But it still doesn't make our catalogs
> work well.
>
> Cause I agree that it's indisputable that our catalogs aren't
> currently working very well, and it's indisputable that we must "move
> toward the user." What this means is less clear and more disputable.
> I am skeptical of most attempts to "move toward" what (people
> believe) 'Amazoogle' does. I think it's often based on a
> misconception of what Amazon/Google/etc actually DO, as well as a
> lack of clarity about _which_ aspects of what they do work well, and
> how to translate that into the environment of a library catalog.
> Ironically, I in fact fully expect Amazon/Google etc. to move
> _toward_ certain things that the library catalog _used_ to be pretty
> good at, but isn't anymore, things that can't be done simply by
> 'dumbing down' the interface. We need to smarten up the catalog, not
> dumb it down. Our catalogs are already pretty dumb.
>
> --Jonathan
>
> At 8:39 PM -0500 6/12/06, Dale Poulter wrote:
> >I agree that Amazon search interface lacks many of the features that I
> >would like to utilize. The issue is that 80% of the users are happy with
> >that interface. That actually makes our jobs more difficult in that we
> >must design the interface to be very simple, fast, Amazon/Google like but
> >be able to translate the search and (through some magic) provide the user
> >what they want and need. This may be using faceted searching, topic maps,
> >or the unknown X system. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that either we
> >move toward the user or the user will continue to move away.
> >
> >
> >
> >--On Tuesday, June 13, 2006 10:29 AM +1000 Alexander Johannesen
> ><alexander.johannesen_at_GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> >>On 6/12/06, Laura Akerman <liblna_at_emory.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Amazon's search capabilities are infuriatingly lacking! - for example,
> >>>with a search for classical music (try prokofiev 2nd piano concerto), or
> >>>an artist or author with a common name, or a title with common words.
> >>>Granted I'm usually looking for something a bit obscure, not the latest
> >>>Mariah Carey record. And any kind of subject searching - forget about
> >>>it.
> >>
> >>Some time ago I wrote an article about Topic Maps in which I used my
> >>frustrations with Amazon.com (*) as an example for those of us who
> >>need a little bit extra from their interfaces, and let's face it ; if
> >>you're into classical or baroque music, you're stuffed! I don't know
> >>how many times I've struggled to find even the basics, like different
> >>renditions of the same piece of music. Drives me nuts, and drives me
> >>away, too.
> >>
> >>
> >>Alex
> >>
> >>(*) http://shelter.nu/art-007.html, scroll down to "Music"
> >>
> >>--
> >>"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
> >> - Frank Herbert
> >>__ http://shelter.nu/ __________________________________________________
> >
> >
> >
> >--Dale
> >
> >---------------------------------------
> >Dale Poulter
> >Systems Librarian
> >Library Information Technology Services
> >Vanderbilt University
> >Suite 700
> >110 21st Avenue South
> >Nashville, TN 37240
> >(615)343-5388
> >(615)343-8834 (fax)
> >(615)207-9705 (cell)
> >dale.poulter_at_vanderbilt.edu
>
Received on Tue Jun 13 2006 - 10:22:19 EDT