Re: Why do so many people use Amazon and Google?

I suggest the library staff brainstorm - today - about who the 10 most
popular instructors on campus are.  Take each one to lunch between now
and July 1.  Bring a laptop top with a wireless connection.  Show each
person your catalog and some other web sites.

ASK THEM WHAT THEY WANT.

Ask them what they like & dislike and why.  Write that down.  Summarize
the results.  Then make it somebody's job to see how the library's web
site and/or catalog can be changed.  Do this at least quarterly.  After
four quarters, do another LibQual and see if the results are different
than the baseline.

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jack Hall
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 8:24 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Why do so many people use Amazon and Google?

I agree with Alex that relevance to users is a slippery slope, in terms
of how we can predict or ascertain it. I certainly find alphabetical by
title arrangement useful sometimes, particularly when I want to browse
the works of an author. Our catalog lets you jump forward and backward
in a browse list (jumping to a known title, or jumping a given number of
entries). That probably wouldn't make any sense if they weren't
displayed alphabetically.
The catalog should offer a choice of "relevance" in displaying entries,
and many do (alphabetical, by date of publication (both ways), etc.).
Number of times circulated might be a good choice, too.

People have been talking here a lot for several years about finding out
what users want. We've done a bunch of LibQual surveys and focus groups,
but I can't tell that anything practical has come out of it. Most of
that has nothing to do with the catalog. Of course we have been trying
to guess what users want in a catalog ever since there have been
catalogs, but usually haven't tried actually to survey users. I think
that gets tricky.
People here have talked about casually strolling around and asking the
occasional user, or constructing theoretical categories of users
(commuting undergraduate; resident graduate; research staff in the
sciences; humanities professor, etc.) I don't see much benefit to either
of those approaches. Doing a scientific study of users and the catalog
would take a lot of money and staff time, including, of course,
researching the voluminous literature about it.

Jack

At 06:41 PM 6/13/2006, Alexander Johannesen wrote:

>Why does it makes sense to sort by title alphabetically? Where does
>that notion come from? Relevance to users is such a crazy field; I'm
>pretty sure that it *does't *make sense to a lot of users to have title

>listed alphabetically.
>

Jack Hall
114L University of Houston Libraries
Houston, TX  77204-2000
telephone:(713) 743-9687
e-mail: jhall_at_uh.edu
fax: (713) 743-9748