On Dec 20, 2007, at 11:51 AM, Nancy Cochran wrote:
[snip]
> However, in my opinion Aquabrowser is only a PRETTY PICTURE. It does
> little except divert a user from what that user started to look for to
> something different. (Type a word. Reduce the hits by selecting
> from the
> "word cloud" twice and see if you have hits that are more helpful
> than the
> original list of hits. My experience is, not usually.)
The purpose of the cloud on the left is not to help you narrow your
results. That's what the sections at the top and on the right are
for. Although I can't speculate as to the intended purposes of the
cloud, it allows you to see and click on related topics quickly. So
when I search for "oncology," I have a clickable list of related
searches like "radiotherapy" and "cancer". When I misspell a word,
such as in "onncology," it shows me some suggested proper spellings,
including "oncology". What's so bad about that?
> Aquabrowser's "word clound" changes a user's search in ways that
> may seem
> "pop" or "hip." But it usually does not tunnel down on an initial
> search
> and help a user find a more focused set of hits.
It doesn't *change* your search. It gives you *new* searches to try.
Again, it's not meant to narrow your results. Assigning unrelated
purposes to something and then calling it worthless seems like a
straw man argument (of course, I can't remember all of my logical
fallacies, so I may have the wrong term there).
In other words, is Google useless because it doesn't allow me to
search my kitchen cabinets? Is Amazon useless because it doesn't let
me search Wikipedia?
> I submit that Aquabrowser makes a naive searcher FEEL HAPPY and
> does little
> else except by serendipity. At its best, perhaps Aquabrowser
> introduces a
> naive user to new material and new ideas. But that is not why we
> teach
> people to search.
I submit that you believe the way you search is the way everyone else
in the world searches. You say "at its best, perhaps Aquabrowser
introduces a naive user to new material and new ideas." How on earth
is that a bad thing?
And as long as library folk call their patrons "naive," those users
will flock to places like Amazon where they're allowed to search and
browse results in a way that works for them, not in a way that some
elitist with a college degree has decreed that they -- foul naive
cretans! -- should search.
> The best part of the Aquabrowser display continues to be "Refine by
> Call
> number Range" a structure which many of you have built over many
> years of
> hard work.
>
> In my opinion, Aquabrowser in a visual bleep in a stable, growing
> system
> that librariians and others are working to build.
What system are you talking about? As far as I can tell, the real
innovations come from people who actually build and release their
idea in the form of something that actually works -- a la Aquabrowser
-- instead of talking about big pie-in-the-sky ideas and theories and
methodologies that never amount to anything you can actually use.
This is a problem in the software development world, too. There's
people who write big grandiose white papers with abstract language
and vague notions. And there's people who actually build things.
Regards,
Tyson
--
Tyson Tate
Web Developer
Robert E. Kennedy Library
Cal Poly University
Received on Thu Dec 20 2007 - 16:45:53 EST