Re: What is the real issue here?

Thank you for this posting.  I am just an embryonic librarian (in library
school) and taking a class on Online Information Systems.  But our big issue
in the class has been user empowerment.  There is something to be said for
making an OPAC that a six year old can sit down at and find a book on cats,
at the same time a researcher can find an obscure thesis that has just the
information that they are looking for without devoting their entire
attention to figuring out the quirks of that particular OPAC.  Librarians
need to make the basic OPAC extremely complex on the back end, so that the
user has a positive experience on the front end.



A brief story to illustrate my point

  I am a horrendous speller, and I was looking for a book in a particular
OPAC for some pleasure reading between semesters.  So, I typed the title
into a title search the book didn't come up.  So I went to Amazon, and they
have that lovely spell check feature, got the tile of the book, copied and
pasted in to the OPAC and found the book. Was it the lazy way?  Sure.  Was I
using appropriate search procedures? Probably not.  Did I find the book
quickly?  Yeah.  So I did not have my good information user hat on to find
some pleasure reading, but it worked.  The OPAC needs to meet the needs of
the user.



One other point (because I never know when to stop):

We also need to be asking the people who don't use the library.  They are
the ones who find OPACs intimidating and elitist.  And those are the people
we need to be reaching.



E. Kathleen Marshall







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From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Andrews, Mark J.
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 12:08 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] What is the real issue here?



Reviewing the last several days of discussion here, I wonder what the real
issue is?  That big companies have lousy tools (compared to the literature).
Yet they appear to have a lot of success (million of users and a viable
businesses, at least in Google's case). Conversely, is the issue that
libraries have:



   * been in existence for hundreds of years

   * 50 years of solid, scientific applicable research in information
storage & retrieval theory

   * educated & helpful staff



and nobody gives a rats ass about us?  Is this more of the librarian's
inferiority complex.  The usual rejoinder to this is "Speak for yourself."
No, thanks, I'll speak for and the to the profession.  The FUD seem to grow
yearly.  What do we do about it?



What are some of the other reasons Amazon and Google are successful?  Their
systems are famously reliable; they work reasonably well all the time.
What's more Amazon and Google's respective brands, products, sales,
marketing and services are unified in each company's web presence.  Geez
Louise, how may libraries can say anything even remotely similar?  How many
of us in library land (directors, managers, line staff, paraprofessionals,
board members, friends, etc) even think about these questions.  HELLO?
BUSINESS PLAN?  MARKETING?  SALES?  CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY (and
something other than LibQual, thank you)?  What can we do that Amazon and
Google can't?  Is that difference relevant to our users?



These are not technological issues and problems, they are human ones.
Without attention, time, people and money devoted to these issues we don't
know what our customers want.  We don't know what we need to start (and more
importantly STOP doing) to give our customers what they want.  We don't know
(and perhaps are not willing to change) to give our customers what they
want.  We don't even ask "What do we do well and how do we do more of it?"
Its almost as if the motto of library land is "At least we don't suck."
Gee, that's elevating.



It seems to me the run-of-the-mill library catalog does an unsatisfactory
job, at best, of doing what the library staff want it to do.  When, for
heaven's sake, was the last time any of us asked our customers what they
want a catalog to do for them - and then find a way to give that to them?



Mark

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Mark Andrews, MLS
Systems Librarian
DoIT Academic and eLearning Technologies
L 32 Reinert Memorial Alumni Library
402.280.3065
mja30807_at_creighton.edu
AIM: mja30807
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