On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Thomas Arendall-Salvetti wrote:
> I would like to echo what Emily Lynema has said: "Why don't we smarten
> up the catalog back-end so that we can dumb down the front-end interface
> and still have it work well?" Amen. Critics who complain of dumbing
> down the catalog have it all wrong. We want smarter OPACS that will do
> more of the behind the scenes work and make searching simpler for our
> patrons.
Agreed. Let the searcher put a whole bunch of keywords in a box and have a
smart system that takes that search and uses real authority control,
relevancy ranking, etc. to bring back not only what user may think is
"good enough" but also what's truly helpful. Google does this better than
Amazon but I can't say either does it well. They do have the content,
though, and the big name familiarity.
Mary
Mary Grenci
University of Oregon Libraries
mgrenci_at_uoregon.edu
Received on Tue Jun 13 2006 - 13:12:56 EDT