Ted,
It's not entirely clear to me what sort of research you describe. It
seems rather humanities-centric; do you think the catalog (as it
exists) serves the hard and social sciences for research? How about
medicine?
And don't for a moment think that 'real researchers' use the library.
See John Regazzi's presentation from NFAIS 2004:
"In a survey for this lecture, librarians and scientists were asked to
name the top scientific and medical search resources that they use or
are aware of. The difference is startling. Librarians named Science
Direct, ISI Web of Science, and Medline, while scientists named
Google, Yahoo, and PubMed (librarians also named PubMed)."
See also the slide he showed to hammer this home in his presentation:
http://rsinger.library.gatech.edu/SMUG/pix/regazzi.jpg
http://www.nfais.org/publications/mc_lecture_2004.htm
Presentation at:
http://www.nfais.org/RegazziNFAISFeb04.ppt
While this presentation focused on licensed databases, I think it's
fair to assume that the OPACs omission in the list of sources
researchers immediately turn to is unrelated.
-Ross.
Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 17:43:07 EDT
