On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Kyle Banerjee <kyle.banerjee_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> In my experience, covers are popular with everyone -- but as eye candy
> rather than as something that is useful. If a cover isn't available
> for the edition you have and you substitute a cover for another
> edition that may look quite different, people perceive an improvement
> in the catalog. I'll bet if you displayed random covers with the text
> obscured, few people would realize what was going on.
>
Kyle,
As a general rule, when applied to libraries, I agree with this. I've
even used the argument about the "the covers don't even look like our
covers since we rebind everything" argument.
The more I think about it, though, is that a list of bibliographic
search results, often 25 to a page -- maybe some images, visually,
help the user navigate through the page, delineate one record from the
the next.
When I look at VuFind versus WebVoyage, for example, there's not much,
visually, that distinguishes them (I mean, ultimately -- they're both
searching MARC data). VuFind's display of dust jackets looks less
clunky however.
Perhaps a better example would be SirsiDynix's iBistro vs. WebCat.
iBistro is still a horrible interface that is almost identical to
WebCat in layout and functionality, but the inclusion dust jackets,
aesthetically, makes it seem a little more friendly and readable. A
slightly more polished turd, if you will.
-Ross.
Received on Fri Jun 27 2008 - 20:05:43 EDT