I've been thinking about this thread a good deal, although I'm sure not
as much as others, and my mind keeps returning to two thoughts:
First, G.K. Chesterton's observation that "Art is limitation: the
essence of every picture is the frame." Second, the "observer effect,"
in which the observation changes the thing being observed. I guess that
sounds pretty goofy (and irrelevant) at first, but let me try to make
sense of the vague things I've been thinking.
To tackle the second idea first, anybody on this listserv, or anyone who
works in libraries, is by definition a fairly sophisticated user of
online catalogs, and is therefore inclined to take full advantage of the
various features the catalogs may offer. So are such people good judges
of what our users want the catalog to do? Oh sure, we do user surveys
and studies, but even those are shaped by what we think the users want.
As an example, we had a huge thread a while back regarding tagging, and
many listserv members chimed in with how tagging should or should not
work. The topic obviously generated a great deal of interest and
excitement, yet do we know how many users want tagging, what priority
they would assign it on a menu of possible catalog features, how they
would use it? I'm not sure; what I do know for sure is that *we* want
it. The word we have gotten from every user survey is that people want a
simpler catalog, and yet all the features we think are neat tend to
clutter the screen or require all sorts of buttons with obscure
functions (for most users).
In relation to the current thread, I worry that many of us have
definitions of what the catalog should include/exclude, but that these
may not match user wants or needs very closely, especially in the public
library environment. This is where the Chesterton quote comes into play.
Many public library users, it seems to me, are looking for something AT
THEIR LOCAL LIBRARY. They need a book for a school report, they want to
read something about diabetes, they heard there was an interesting
article in a recent issue of NEWSWEEK, they need an idea for a science
fair project. Some of these needs could be met by using Google or some
other search engine, but a) Not everybody has home Internet access, b)
Not everybody "gets" how to use Google, and c) There are some topics for
which it is very hard to get good results out of Google even if you know
what you're doing. Using Google can be like trying to drink out of a
fire hose, and there are times when you just need a sip. For these
users, the essence of the library is the stuff in that building on the
corner over there, and I often fear that in our attempt to tailor the
catalog to the needs of the more sophisticated users, we're locking out
these people. It may be that in a generation or so, everybody will be
computer-savvy and this won't be an issue, but personally I doubt it.
None of which is to say that we shouldn't develop cool catalog features,
but it's equally important to keep the basic catalog clear and simple,
and to make some of the not-so-cool features work better and more
easily. I suspect that a hefty percentage of our regular users would
trade in tagging or even internet access for a reserve system that could
handle volume holds better than any of the systems I've seen, or better
roadmaps to where the book they want is on the shelves.
So when you boil down all the surplus verbiage, I guess my points are
these:
1) We should never forget that many libraries will, for the foreseeable
future, continue to have a physical presence with physical collections;
2) What we think is cool may not be what most users want, especially in
a public library environment where there is such a broad spectrum of
users.
Hope this all doesn't sound too reactionary....
Steve McLaughlin
San Francisco Public Library
Whose views do not necessarily represent those of the San Francisco
Public Library or the City and County of San Francisco, or, for that
matter, any sane human being.
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 10:14 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] what is in this "next generation" library catalog
thing?
Eric,
To me the question is not "what's in it?" but "what does it connect to?"
and "what are it's services?" The library will have some kind of
inventory of holdings, but that's the management view (we have to manage
our inventory). In the user view, I think the library "catalog" should
disappear into the Net and become part of the whole world of
information. The users may not even know that a catalog, as such,
exists. The library will become an information community that provides
services. Some of those services will be based around resources that the
library owns and licenses, some will be based around publicly available
resources on the open network. (OK, assuming that we still have an open
network in the future, but let's pretend that we will.)
What might this look like? Well, we have a certain amount of it today. A
user does a basic search on a search engine. Among the items that are
retrieved are openly available articles, and articles for which the open
web only has the metadata. However, because the user is part of a
library community, he is notified of articles that are available to him
through this community. He also sees which ones are available for
purchase. He may never "go to" a library catalog, because the library
serves it all up through web services. The catalog itself, if it exists,
is a small subset of the total information universe.
I can also imagine that a user within an institution (university,
corporation) may have an institutional view of information that is
specifically geared to that community, such as being able to see what
items are currently being used in the classroom, or to see confidential
corporate information sources. I suspect that the institutional view and
the view that we think of as the public library view will be different,
mainly because the public library needs to serve a wide range of
interests. I think it will be harder to create a service-based "catalog"
in the public library arena because of this. I don't have a sense of how
public libraries or small libraries of any kind will be able to function
in this view. My dream would be that state libraries become the virtual
libraries for all citizens of the state, because they might be large
enough to be visible in the greater information space.
kc
Received on Wed Mar 21 2007 - 10:20:01 EDT