Everyone,
Apologies for that last post. I got confused. Ted is right on here
about the new catalog Martha has introduced.
I said: "So if someone puts in WW II or WWII or World War 2 or World War
II, a system should be able to search the authority records as well, and
be able to immediately go to or at least direct people to the simple
heading, which is World War, 1939-1945."
The system DOES do this, as Ted has shown.
The need for more powerful software, or RDF, or whatever (you tech guys
are the experts here) comes in when someone does a search for one of
those terms above and "France" (France WWII, France WW II, etc...)
They get no hits here in THIS situation. So there needs to be a way to
search to coordinate a search of the LC authority files (which relate
the alternative headings, [the "see" references] and the related
headings ["see also", broader terms, narrower terms, etc] to the main
heading) and the main headings found in the bibliographic records.
Does anyone know how this could be done? Martha would like to know if
its possible.
Regards,
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC)
11200 93rd Ave. North
Maple Grove, MN. 55369
Work phone: 763-391-7183
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 12:22 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] The problem with OPACs [was: New subject keyword
search]
Michael,
I'm sorry for my outburst about "libraries not being educational
institutions." That is caricaturing what you said. But have you tried
the search interface Yee sent?
http://cinema.library.ucla.edu
The "topic or genre/form" search option provides a very user-friendly
way for people to get familiar with controlled vocabulary. As I pointed
out to someone on Autocat, if you search for world war battles or
battles world war, you get these terms:
World War, 1914-1918--Battles, sieges, etc.
World War, 1939-1945--Battles, sieges, etc.
Those are all see references (terms on authority records that are not
the established forms). Clicking on the "more info" buttons by them,
these established headings came up:
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations.
World War, 1914-1918--Campaigns.
World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations.
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns.
World War, 1939-1945--Naval operations.
When you click on the first of those, it is further expanded to:
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations.
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations, American--Drama.
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations, British--Drama.
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations--Caricatures and cartoons.
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations--Drama.
World War, 1914-1918--Aerial operations, German--Drama.
They take you directly to the titles.
It seems the problem with the position you are advocating is that you're
missing the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled vocabulary.
If I do a keyword search for world war battles from that same search
page, I get 18 hits. 18 titles. But there is no indication of how the
various hits relate to each other as subjects. A person has to
laboriously go through each one, and probably a significant number will
not be what she's looking for.
What you said about standardization of design is well taken. I don't own
a car but rent them occasionally, and it is annoying when I can't figure
out where the lever for opening the gas cap and such like are. But the
acquisition of knowledge is, I think, a more complex process than
driving a car. Driving a car is expected to be habitual: once you learn
the task, it's supposed to be something that requires little or no
thought. Research isn't that kind of thing. The question is, do we want
to transfer the effort and expense of organizing information entirely to
the users, or do we want to continue to do some of it for them?
I imagine Selden is right about the transaction logs in her system. But
more research needs to be done on the research behavior and needs of
scholarly users. Those are the people we want our freshmen to grow into,
and if we remove tools they need, it may seriously impair our ability as
a society to produce high-quality scholarship.
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 Doran, Michael D
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 9:32 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] The problem with OPACs [was: New subject keyword
search]
> Selden Deemer wrote:
>
> Whatever the considerable benefits of browse displays (I
> read, and took to heart Thomas Mann's comments), the fact
> remains that, when I look at our search log stats, users (as
> opposed to librarians) simply do NOT browse (and it's not for
> lack of instruction).
I'm convinced that the underlying "problem" with our OPACs (from a
usability perspective) is that they are sold once to librarians, rather
than many times to end users. If each user was making an individual
purchase decision, OPACs would have quickly evolved to meet their needs.
I believe ILS vendors (who we often unfairly blame) are quite capable of
producing an awesome OPAC. But the vendors are building OPACs to meet
our (i.e. librarians) perceived needs, because vendors are smart and are
in business to make money and they understand that *we* are the ones
writing that big check every 10-15 years or so. As Selden points out,
OPAC features that are important/essential to us, are often ones that
our users could care less about, despite all our well-meaning
instruction.
And that is assuming that OPAC functionality/usability is even a prime
consideration in the purchase decision of an ILS. Very often that's not
the case, as acquisitions, cataloging, or circulation module features
drive the decision and the OPAC is an afterthought. If we want to find
out who's responsible for sucky OPACs, the first place we need to look
is in the mirror [1].
On the bright side, products like VUFind, Primo, AquaBrowser, and Endeca
unbundle the OPAC from the ILS, giving us a chance to atone for past ILS
purchase decisions (which can't easily be undone). One of the problems
inherent in an ILS-bundled OPAC is that the 10-15 year (give or take)
ILS replacement cycle does not allow for significant changes to what
quickly becomes a calcified code base. I'm particularly excited about
Andrew Nagy's recently released open-source OPAC; with VUFind, the
library-land development community has a golden opportunity to craft an
OPAC that genuinely meets our users needs. However, doing so will
require that we resist the temptation to create the ideal OPAC for
*librarians*, but instead focus on creating on OPAC that meets our
*users'* search needs. I think that would be an OPAC that doesn't
require instruction (however well-meaning) or require an initial search
page that is 80% search tips.
Just my opinion...
-- Michael
[1] Karen Schneider asks: "But the interesting questions are: Why don't
online catalog vendors offer true search in the first place? and Why
[don't we] demand it? Save the time of the reader!" I would answer that
vendors don't offer it, and we don't demand it, because the ILS (OPAC)
check-writers have other priorities.
See: Karen Schneider, How OPACs Suck, Part 1
http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/03/how-opacs-suck-part-1-relevan
ce-rank-or-the-lack-of-it.html
# Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
# University of Texas at Arlington
# 817-272-5326 office
# 817-688-1926 mobile
# doran_at_uta.edu
# http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
Received on Thu Jul 26 2007 - 11:32:09 EDT