> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 6:00 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Browsing percentages / analytics (Revisited)
>
> > The point of my post was that people *do not* have to use the advanced
> > search screen to do this "uberdweeb" kind of searching. What they can
> do is
> > click on the link that they see in the bibliographic record after they
> do a
> > keyword search. Therefore, they can search "assassinations italy" and
> find a
> > record with the subjects:
> > * Assassination -- History -- Italy-- 20th century.
> > * Assassination -- History -- Italy-- 21st century.
> > * Murder -- History -- Italy-- 20th century.
> > * Murder -- History -- Italy-- 21st century.
> > * Political violence -- History -- Italy-- 20th century.
>
> I'm totally with you on this. It's just that the numbers seemed really
> skewed.
>
> One of the weaknesses of most implementation of click through subject
> headings is that there are too many unique headings. For example, all
> of the headings above appear to be unique in your catalog which limits
> their utility as they all point to only one record.
I have a very small collection, and for books with those specific topics,
the result returned is correct. For browsing however, there should be more
power such as that found in other catalogs, e.g. so that
"Assassination -- History -- Italy-- 20th century" would return a display
that can be browsed, such as
"Political violence Israel Public opinion.
Political violence Italy.
Political violence Italy History 20th century.
Political violence Italy Marzi History 19th century.
Political violence Italy Modena History 20th century.
Political violence Italy Prevention.
Political violence Juvenile literature.
Political violence Kenya."
My system won't do this yet.
But most proprietary catalogs do this and is nothing new, but it is still
far from what people need. One thing that people really want (in my opinion)
are the cross references for, e.g. "Political violence" found very nicely
through Bernhard Eversberg's LCSH broswer, which provides users with all
kinds of terms they would never have considered:
http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/lcsh/page.php?urG=%7C1&urS=political%20violenc
e
In the proprietary catalogs I have seen, users would have to scroll through
100 or so screens to get the cross-references, and they will not do this.
This would seem to be have relatively simple solutions, however.
To make up for the smallness of my collection, I have added my "Extend
Search" function, which extends a user's search into all kinds of other
databases: other libraries in Rome where my users can go, electronic books,
open archives, etc. This increases the materials my users can access
exponentially, but this is another topic.
> It is a little dangerous to infer effectiveness of searches by their
> relative popularity. Someone sent me an off list message suggesting
> that subject searches are 80 times more popular than title searches in
> your catalog because people using the latter find what they want right
> away and quit, while those choosing the former strategy just spin in
> circles. There is a kernel of truth in every joke....
Again, I am not concluding that my users are finding what they want and/or
need using my catalog: the stats don't support that. What I am tentatively
concluding is that my users are using the catalog as it is designed to be
used. This is at odds with the other statistics I have seen.
Whether this leads my users to their own success at finding materials needs
further research. I don't know if people are finding materials with subject
searches or just giving up in disgust and switching to Google. I don't think
so, and I hope not(!), but that could end up being the case.
Jim
James Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 327
fax-011 39 06 58330992
Received on Mon Feb 18 2008 - 05:59:30 EST