Now, the online full text access thing was just one example. It's not
the center of my arguement or anything, there are many more examples. But.
Ted, you're really suggesting that it's probably not that important
whether it's obvious from a catalog record whether full text is
available online or not?
Really?
All of the user research I have seen, all of my anecdotal evidence from
talking to users or observing users at reference desks or in libraries
or anything else, everything I have ever heard from anyone else who does
this, says: Users care about whether something is available online in
full text, and how to get that as quickly as possible, more than they
care about almost anything else.
I have users complaining to me about the fact that it takes THREE CLICKS
(and less than 60 seconds) to get to full text via our link resolver.
They want it take 1 click and five seconds. This is one of the biggest
complaints I hear. To have a link presented to them that they have to
click on to find out if it's full text---and after clicking, it may not
be immediately apparent, they may have to make a few more clicks to find
out--this is also a big complaint.
If you, or I, or Thomas Mann thinks these users are immature and lazy,
that doesn't mean much to these users. They say, why SHOULDN'T the
library be able to tell me with certainty and speed if full text is
available and how to get it? And I think they're right. If you want to
tell them instead that they are lazy and immature for thinking so---most
of them will use Google instead.
And guess what? It's not just undergrads thinking this way. It's PhD
students and faculty too. And med students and doctors too. The doctors
too want us to make it as easy as possible for them to get what they
need, so they can use it to do their jobs better. Because their job is
not research. They don't enjoy research. The research is what they need
in order to do their jobs as well and responsibly as possible. [Neither
do arts & sciences faculty--that's why they have their grad students do
it for them!]. OUR job is research, WE enjoy research, and our job is to
make it as easy as possible for our patrons and users.
But this was just one example. As it turns out, a good example, in that
it very well illustrates the problems we face. (But _illustrates_, not
_comprises_, please.) A big part of the problem seems to be trying to
tell our users what they SHOULD want, if they were mature and not lazy,
instead of trying to give them what they DO want.
Incidentally, on top of how this shows up in the catalog, I want to
_use_ this information _outside_ of what we think of as 'the catalog'.
As part of my job, I am responsible for the link resolver. This is the
screen that basically tells people where to get full text, generally
after being directed there from a n A&I database search, but
increasingly from other places too (open world cat, for instance).
Generally, most link resolvers answer this question solely from their
own knowledge base. But I'm trying to get it to use the rich information
from our catalog too. And giving the users a random list of links and
saying "Hey, click on all these, and maybe you'll get full text and
maybe you won't, and in many cases you'll have to poke around a bit to
find out if you do or not"---it just doesn't cut it! Really! And our
users DO care!
Our bibliographic data has to be thought of as a storehouse of data
supporting our entire business, which will be used by a variety of
different applications and interfaces, 'the opac' being just one of them.
Jonathan
Ted P Gemberling wrote:
> Jonathan,
> Thanks for your summary. More about that below.
>
> Karen wrote:
>
> "My guess is that we are going to improve our catalogs incrementally
> ..."
>
> I appreciate that. That's often the safest way to do things. It enables
> you to see the costs and benefits at each step. If you try to go too
> fast, there's a good chance you'll regret something later.
>
> "Beyond that, we also need to embrace incoming data and resources that
> differ from library standards so that we can be seen as a source of all
> information, not just "library" information."
>
> A big part of Mann's position is to emphasize that libraries and the Web
> really do have different values. No one denies that we need to catalog
> some things on the web. After all, journals are going electronic, and
> there's probably no way, and no reason, to stop that. At the very least,
> it will solve huge problems of space. The web is one media of
> publication. But libraries, especially in certain fields, are made up of
> more than journals, and libraries convey more than information. They
> convey knowledge, a higher, more integrated level of awareness. I don't
> want to annoy people with a lot more philosophical postings, but at the
> bottom I'm going to copy and paste something I posted several weeks ago
> that states my own personal take on the difference.
>
> On his blog (http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/broken-huh/),
> Jonathan writes:
>
> "There are very basic questions of high interest to our users that our
> data set is unable to answer, even though we are spending time recording
> information that ought to be available to answer these questions. One
> very good example-and it's just one example-is Roy Tennant's analysis of
> the inability to say whether full content is available online even
> though we are already spending time recording URL information."
>
> Now, I'm not going to say we definitely shouldn't make that crystal
> clear on our OPACs, if there's some way to do so. (I'm not an electronic
> or media cataloger, so that's kind of out of my department.) But I do
> have to ask how much of a burden that uncertainty really is on users.
> This seems to assume that as soon as you enter your search query and get
> a result set, full-text content should be immediately discernible. I
> realize it is on many electronic databases. But is that really a major
> problem for researchers? To have to click a few more times?
>
> In his publications, Thomas Mann emphasizes that real research is a
> complex, difficult process that often has to be approached from various
> angles. It takes time. And you often need training from reference
> librarians on what to look for if you're in an unfamiliar area.
>
> Having not read the Autocat postings Tennant refers to, I don't really
> know why catalog records do not indicate full text in many cases. But
> I'm guessing that it's something that wasn't regarded as important to
> the designers of the records, in comparison with other things.
>
> "The metadata system/environment we have now was very intelligently
> optimized for the social, economic, and technical context of the mid
> 20th century."
>
> I'd opine that it's, at the very least, optimized for the last decade of
> the 20th century. Personally, I think it's optimized for this decade,
> but there's absolutely no justification for claiming it's as archaic as
> the mid-20th century. A lot of advantages have come with online
> catalogs: information is accessible in many more ways today, even if the
> content that was on cards has remained constant to a certain extent.
>
> Another point I imagine someone might bring up would be
> post-coordination as a "better tool" than precoordination, since it's
> more "web friendly." The best thing I know on that topic is this piece
> by Mann from the Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium
> conference:
> http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/mann_paper.html
> It's long, but worth reading.
>
> Jonathan, I'll look more at your blog and the responses to it. Thanks to
> Bernhard and Alexander for their postings on this thread, too.
> --Open-mindedly yours, Ted Gemberling
>
> Libraries and the Web (with personal references removed)
>
> Here's a stab at how we might distinguish the purposes of libraries and
> the Web. I think libraries, as public institutions, are in the business
> of preserving information that the public (or maybe better, the "body
> politic") has decided is important. The things which are necessary for
> education, research, public safety, and other concerns. That isn't
> really contradicted by public libraries' fiction sections, because they
> just show that the "body politic" has decided it's important to provide
> entertainment, too. Nor is it contradicted by some libraries being
> privately owned, because even if they're private--unless they're just
> "libraries" in people's homes--they have to reflect "public" concerns to
> some extent. Otherwise no one will use them.
>
> In contrast, the Web is centered on the interests of individuals. It is
> often ... "loose data." It is the realm of freedom and personal
> preference, and somewhat of chaos. Great sites like IMDb or Google exist
> because people want to look for things outside what is provided by the
> public institution of libraries. If you're a film buff like me, you
> won't be satisfied by what libraries can give you. And we wouldn't want
> to make libraries tell us everything about movies. At least not most
> libraries.
>
> This isn't to say you can't publish things, even "serious" things like
> electronic journals, on the Web. Though the "serious" ones are more
> likely to come with a price. Maybe I should say the Web is a realm that
> contains both "raw" and "controlled" data, and librarians select
> strictly from the things they've decided are important.
>
> On the Web, it's questionable that one really has an inalienable right
> to anything. I'm sympathetic to "Net Neutrality," but I wonder if we
> might have to realize that as an entity that exists for individuals'
> whims and interests, the Internet may not be able to provide equal
> access to everybody. That may be another important purpose of libraries,
> to provide a place where individuals who can't afford fast access to it
> at home can get it. But capitalism may hold sway on the Web, as in most
> forms of publishing.
>
> Here's an example of the value of "loose data." I catalog 19th century
> books, and many of them have signatures that are pretty illegible.
> Sometimes I can only guess at how to read people's handwriting. Google
> is a terrific source for deciphering the signatures at times. LC's Name
> Authority File can help somewhat, but it's a lot farther from containing
> every personal name that has ever existed than Google. On Google, I can
> try different possible readings of the names and see which ones have
> matches. After I do that, I may go to the NAF to see if there's a
> corresponding heading.
>
> As a library cataloger, my job is to translate that "loose data" into
> something that isn't "loose." Of course established headings exemplify
> "non-looseness." When something goes from the realm of the private to
> the public, looseness has to stop for the most part. Transcriptional
> fields like the 246 are looser, but even they are governed by some
> strict rules.
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 14:58:02 EDT