> However, it is worth noting that the Card catalog did have consistent
> "look and feel" from library to library. It provided customers with a
> familiar looking interface, a certain level of comfort and the illusion
> that they knew what they were doing when they searched it.
>
> It might be worth considering whether instead of outdoing ourselves
> innovatively redesigning and branding our OPACs, individually, whether we
> ought not to look for some common design elements that could make life
> easier for customers and bibliographic instruction easier for librarians.
I'm with you on this, Jane--at least in principle, though I'm a test-it
kinda gal.
A reader of my personal blog commented that she missed card catalogs.
What it turned out that she meant is that she missed a certain amount of
spelling fault-tolerance. When people talk about "missing card
catalogs," it's worth listening. We can learn a lot. She's absolutely
right: there's no reason for any catalog to mis-handle the slips and
mistakes common to interacting via keyboard with a database.
>
> In principle integrating the OPAC with other information resources sounds
> good. In practice many customers still come to the library looking for
> resources (whether books, CDs, videos, etc.) to check out. Finding the
> OPAC to look for these physical objects shouldn't be a treasure hunt. We
> still need the "inventory control" aspect of our catalog and so do our
> customers.
They do come to the library to check out items and a catalog ought to
facilitate a variety of information use activities. I have been on the
road and unable to respond to the Amazoogle comments (except in my head
:> ) but the various experiments with faceted navigation for entry
output tell me Google seems to be backing away from its idea that a
single blorted entry will work well. Once they added heterogenous
content to their repertoire it's interesting what they started looking
at. I wouldn't extrapolate too much from Amazon's design, but wouldn't
it be interesting to get the Amazon folk to talk with us in LibraryLand
about what works for them.
We have found in usability testing that no matter what the sort order
is, labeling the results appropriately is important. It's funny/sad what
theories people come up with regarding sort order. And of course here
we're talking about the traditional (?) results column, not more recent
enhancements to post-coordination (yay, a word I have exhumed from
library school!). Beyond the blort, good clustering into navigable
facets seems to have value for many types of information.
Oh and thanks to Karen C. for that terrific sensemaking summary, though
I'd love it if she expounded more on the "context" comment, which I
suspect is important.
Karen G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.scom
Received on Thu Jun 15 2006 - 11:45:50 EDT