Jonathan and Karen,
That's interesting. I hadn't noticed that it wasn't a "browse screen" in
the traditional sense. I guess because it looks so much like one at
first glance. And actually, I think giving access to a browse screen in
that sense wouldn't be feasible with such a search: there are just too
many heading strings in the database.
As for the usefulness of this, I think the point is that it is a "browse
screen" if you mean a screen that enables a person to "recognize"
heading possibilities he couldn't have known in advance. That
familiarizes him with subject vocabulary. Thomas Mann has given a number
of arguments for the usefulness of this kind of thing.
Also, while it isn't a browse screen in the traditional sense, if you
open the resources it leads you to, then click on the headings, it takes
you to a browse screen. So I think this does what a lot of people have
been saying LCSH as previously configured could not do: give people an
entryway into the controlled vocabulary, in PRECOORDINATE FORM.
Michael, if I understand what you're saying, it's that libraries are not
educational institutions at all. People shouldn't expect to learn
anything when they come to libraries. I think such a course might serve
high school students and freshmen well enough, but it's not going to do
much for people doing serious research.
Here's an anecdote Yee mentions that I think is worth considering:
"I once went to a talk by a colleague who was working in the business
world on an information portal. He indicated that the project had begun
as an automatic indexing project with relevance ranking, but that the
people paying for the work were so dissatisfied with the results that
the project had morphed into a thesaurus development project employing
human indexers.
Is this a vision of the future? Information organization only for those
who pay for it and Google for the rest, instead of information
organization for all as a social good paid for with tax dollars?"
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:26 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] New subject keyword search
Intersetingly, the 'browse' list appears to me to include _only_ those
headings that matched your query. It does not in fact include
alphabetically adjacent headings that did not match your query. If I'm
interpreting things right. It is instead an alphabetically arrange list
of LCSH headings that matched your query. Correct me if I'm wrong.
To me, this is actually a type of 'keyword' search, not in fact what we
usually think of as a 'browse list'---as a browse list is usually
showing you ALL headings, starting at the point of your alphabetic
query--but not restricted to headings that match your query.
In fact, that makes it quite similar to the "facetted" displays of
subjects we have been seeing lately, in that only things that match your
query are shown. The differences are two. One is in the definition of
'that match your query'---here, your terms must match in the authority
record. In the typical 'facetted' display, headings are shown if they
are attached to a bib record which matched your query. So that's a more
expansive (higher recall) type of search. I have thought before that
headings that themselves matched your query ought to be given
prominence, even if the more expansive list is shown.
Secondly is that the typical facetted searches we see deconstruct the
pre-coordinated LCSH headings into component parts, and this one of
course does not. It would be interesting to see in terms of both user
studies and analysis what the benefits and weaknesses of both approaches
are (both approaches do have both benefits and weaknesses).
And of course, a third obvious difference is that the typical facetted
displays we have seen put the bibs that matched your query on the screen
together with the list of headings. Whereas this one gives you a screen
only of headings. I think there are plusses and minuses there too.
Always interesting to consider the diversity of possible interfaces
possible, to make the best use of our rich controlled data. Up to now,
too few of our systems have even tried to do that, but it seems we're
finally entering a period of innovation in interfaces.
Jonathan
Ted P Gemberling wrote:
> Martha Yee reported this week about a great development in subject
> searching, spearheaded particularly by Sara Shatford Layne. See this
> page from UCLA's Film & Television Archive:
>
> http://cinema.library.ucla.edu <http://cinema.library.ucla.edu/>
>
>
>
> If you select topic or genre/form search, you can enter any
combination
> of words in the search box, in any order. The great thing is that the
> result is a subject browse screen rather than a list of "hits," as
usual
> for subject keyword searches. It draws from the authorities, not just
> the forms of headings on bib records, so xrefs are searched, too.
>
>
>
> This is a development by Endeavor (Voyager), so it is, I suppose,
> proprietary. But I think it's a very good development.
>
>
>
> Ted Gemberling
>
> UAB Lister Hill Library
>
> (205)934-2461
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jul 25 2007 - 14:44:23 EDT