Yeah, that's what seems likely to be most useful about book covers for
'identification' too. NOT recognizing a book cover as matching an actual
physical book you've seen, but recognizing a book cover as matching the
search results you saw previously! This is potentially useful despite
the fact that book covers displayed might not match the physical book on
the library shelves, or the physical book that a user has seen
previously not from the library, etc.
Nice to hear some verification of this effect.
Jonathan
Jimmie Lundgren wrote:
> My academic library's public interface has begun displaying GOOGLEBOOKS
> bookcovers when they are available. At first I just thought the
> bookcover displays helped to make the catalog more attractive and added
> a little additional information about the resource. That made them seem
> worthwhile to me, even given the inconsistency in their availability and
> some occasional mismatches. However, last week a reference librarian
> told me she had just used the bookcover display to get back to a
> specific one of several similar sources she had used previously, and now
> I have a new appreciation for the potential of such images displayed in
> the catalog to add to, (although certainly not replace), our current
> ways to support the "identify" user task.
>
> While I offer this as anecdotal evidence, I think it will be great for
> research to be performed to uncover more about user behavior in relation
> to new catalog features such as these. Even though the rapidly
> developing improvements to OPAC interfaces constitute a moving target
> and will be difficult to study in reliable ways, such research is badly
> needed to direct the developments more effectively. Thanks,
> Jimmie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris Thiessen
> Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 5:00 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Zoomi and your library OPAC
>
> Hi, I'm the creator of Zoomii. A pair of helpful people referred me to
> this
> thread. It's been a very interesting discussion to read.
>
> I suppose my main response to Tim Spalding and others would be that
> covers
> *are* good for discovery, because they're designed to communicate
> something
> about the book, not just grab random attention. (like Audrey Laplante
> described for music) Their easy recognition, which Tim pointed out,
> also
> aids discovery, because when you see a book you recognize and love on
> the
> shelf, you tend to look at the ones around it to, which are most often
> similar in subject or author.
>
> Library patrons don't spend all their time searching at a terminal and
> then
> going to the specific books, or exploring the area near a found book, or
> browsing a favorite section, or just browsing randomly. In fact, I'd
> guess
> most patrons do all these things.
>
> That means they're voting with their feet. The books on shelves satisfy
> a
> need the conventional electronic catalogs do not, and vice versa.
>
> I don't think remote access changes that.
>
> (Not to say that something like Zoomii satisfies as much as a real
> bookshelf; it doesn't... yet. :)
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jul 02 2008 - 09:34:02 EDT