Eric,
I finally got around to writing my thoughts down...
http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2007/12/its_all_about_l.php
rob
On 11 Dec 2007, at 17:59, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> The (draft) Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control includes
> the following section, [1] and while the section speaks to the needs/
> desires of users, its recommendations speak to the future of library
> catalogs. As such it is perfectly apropos for this list.
>
> The section is yet another vision/articulation of how library
> catalogs should function in the future. Any library automation vendor
> or open source software community could use it as a blueprint for
> development. If we assume this to be true, then what are the next
> steps in the creation of one or more of these systems?
>
> The section is quoted in full in order to "save the time of the
> reader":
>
>
> 4.1 Design for Today's and Tomorrow's User
>
> The metadata created by libraries' bibliographic control activities
> serve multiple types of users. These include the customers of our
> libraries and of our catalogs, other libraries, and the library
> service industry. "Users" are not only people, but the systems and
> software that interact with metadata to provide services. Metadata
> are used within both a consumer environment and a management
> environment. Each of these groups and uses poses somewhat different
> requirements.
>
> Users of library materials are diverse, and a single individual will
> exhibit different needs, expectations, and behaviors as the purpose
> of his/her research changes. There is no "typical user." Library
> users can vary widely in their knowledge both of library systems and
> of the subject domains they are investigating. Studies indicate that
> over three-quarters of users have low knowledge of how to use the
> library catalog as well as low subject knowledge of their immediate
> topic of interest. By contrast, less than 1% of users have high
> skills in both using the catalog and subject domain knowledge. This
> disparity in user skills and needs makes it difficult for libraries
> to focus their bibliographic control efforts.
>
> Users are making new demands on metadata. Thanks to the ubiquity and
> utility of Web search engines, in combination with rapid innovations
> in Web technology, most users now conduct their research in multiple
> discovery environments: search engines, online booksellers, course
> management systems, specialized databases, library catalogs, and
> more. They prefer to have simultaneous access to information in many
> physical and digital formats, beyond traditional print.
>
> A significant change in the searching behavior of library users has
> occurred in the past decade, with users often bypassing library
> catalogs and going first to search engines and other Internet
> resources. The content of these discovery systems (including those
> managed by libraries) is becoming more blended and diverse; materials
> formerly managed through separate standards and practices (such as
> articles, archives, and images) are now being mixed in both general
> and domain-specific systems.
>
> As experienced users of Internet search engines, library users expect
> increased capabilities in our online systems. They value features and
> data that help them make sense of results by ranking, organizing, and
> clustering. Library catalogs have consciously presented a neutral and
> authoritative view of the bibliographic universe. Evaluative
> information, such as reviews and reading lists, has not traditionally
> been part of the library catalog (although they have of course long
> been part and parcel of "the compleat reference department"). Today,
> bibliographic Web sites like Amazon.com and LibraryThing provide
> users with information about resources, as well as information that
> help them evaluate those resources. They also allow users to share
> reading lists, add reviews and ratings, and supply their own subject
> tags. Both Amazon and LibraryThing embody a combination of
> bibliographic and social networking systems. LibraryThing, in fact,
> is largely based on library-produced data. Library systems are
> responding to changes in user expectations with new collocation and
> display methods, including clustering all versions of a work, and
> faceting retrieved results sets by subject, format, classification,
> and language. Few library systems, however, currently allow users to
> add or manipulate catalog data.
>
> Libraries have tended to equate bibliographic control with the
> production of metadata for use solely within the library catalog.
> This narrow focus is no longer suitable in an environment wherein
> data from diverse sources are used to create new and interesting
> information views. Library data must be usable outside of the
> catalog, and the catalog must be able to ingest or interact with
> records from sources outside of the library cataloging workflow. The
> tightly controlled consistency designed into library standards thus
> far is unlikely to be realized or sustained in the future, even
> within the local environment.
>
> Any given library will, of necessity, serve users with different
> levels of sophistication in library use and in subject knowledge. The
> challenge to libraries, then, is to produce metadata that will serve
> this broad range of users well. Many libraries have chosen to produce
> metadata to satisfy the needs of their most sophisticated users,
> despite the fact that such users are but a small percentage of their
> total user base. They do so on the increasingly dubious assumption
> that all users will benefit from the greatest detail in cataloging.
>
>
> Consequences of Maintaining the Status Quo
>
> Library users will continue to bypass catalogs in favor of search
> engines. Some studies have found that over three quarters of library
> users start with a search engine and not the online catalog.24
>
> The resources needed to catalog at a sophisticated level are
> increasingly difficult to sustain. Libraries face a trade-off between
> doing detailed cataloging for regularly published materials, and
> doing less-detailed cataloging for a wider variety of information
> types.
>
>
> Recommendations
>
> 4.1.1 Link Appropriate External Information with Library Catalogs
>
> 4.1.1.1 All: Encourage and support development of systems capable of
> relating evaluative data, such as reviews and ratings, to
> bibliographic records.
>
> 4.1.1.2 All: Encourage the enhancement of library systems to provide
> the capability to link to appropriate user-added data available via
> the Internet (e.g., Amazon.com, LibraryThing, and Wikipedia).
>
> 4.1.2 Integrate User-Contributed Data into Library Catalogs
>
> 4.1.2.1 All: Develop library systems that can accept user input and
> other non- library data without interfering with the integrity of
> library-created data.
>
> 4.1.2.2 All: Investigate methods of categorizing creators of added
> data to allow informed use of user-contributed data without violating
> the privacy obligations of libraries.
>
> 4.1.2.3 All: Develop methods to guide user tagging through techniques
> that suggest entry vocabulary (e.g., term completion, tag clouds).
>
> 4.1.3 Research Use of Computationally Derived Evaluation
>
> 4.1.3.1 All: Make use of holdings and circulation information to
> point users to items that are most used and that may potentially be
> of most interest.
>
> 4.1.3.2 All: Compare user tags with controlled vocabularies and
> identify correlations between them.
>
>
> Desired Outcomes
>
> Library bibliographic data will be used in a wide variety of
> environments, and interoperability between library and non-library
> bibliographic applications will increase/improve.
>
> Library catalogs are seen as valuable components in an interlocking
> array of discovery tools.
>
> Library resource discovery and evaluation will be enhanced by
> contributions from users.
>
>
> [1] http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwg-report-
> draft-11-30-07-final.pdf
>
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
> University Libraries of Notre Dame
>
> (574) 631-8604
Received on Wed Dec 12 2007 - 15:51:30 EST