Just glanced a little at this using the Bridget Jones example. Got to
say that NoveList seems to do a much better job in a lot of areas -
the Danbury site claims it is showing me "similar books" but why are
they supposedly similar? Because one reader somewhere said so? There
aren't any categories to define what you'd like to match on. With
NoveList, if I want *only* books matching Bridget Jones on "office
romance" I can do that. Danbury gives this book a single subject
heading - NoveList has over a dozen for it.
Searching for "jazz" I find Chris Raschka's "Charlie Parker Played
Bebop" - OK, fine. That's a children's book about jazz. So let's see
what's similar - a bunch of pretty generic children's books. But not
a single one about jazz, even though Danbury owns several relevant
titles (for example, those that use the LCSH Jazz musicians -- United
States -- Biography -- Juvenile literature). So what makes the
choices given "similar"??? "Kiss The Cow!" - WTF? Oh, just because
they are both tagged "picture books" - oh great. Other tags are
"jazz" and "music" but I don't see similar books matching those.
Pretty useless at this point, if you ask me. Now, NoveList isn't
perfect on this book (well, to begin with, it's not really a novel!)
but I do manage to get to a similar book in "Little Lil and the
Swing-Singing Sax", which looks to be very apt. And lo and behold,
that's actually IN the Danbury library catalog but it doesn't show up
as being similar.
Personally, if this were my library OPAC, I'd really like an option
to turn OFF the tags and similar books stuff. Way too much noise, red
herrings, blind alleys, and not enough quality information. I don't
think throwing a pile of new information (i.e., tags) is what is
needed. We need to do a better job of handling what's already there.
Mike
mike at jazzdiscography.com
www.jazzdiscography.com
Received on Tue May 15 2007 - 01:55:32 EDT