> After all, in my home town we have a very large used book store. It
> has no publicly accessible inventory of their 'collection', and yet it
> is always crowded with people that seem to have found what they want.
>
> Somehow, people have a knack for finding things even in the crudest of
> classification.
Just out of curiosity, how big is "very large?" I often hear of using
bookstores as a model to emulate. However, the number of books in a
very large bookstore is minuscule compared to a decent library
collection. It's one thing to arrange tens of thousands of things,
mostly on popular topics. It's another to arrange millions of things
that come in different formats, publication patterns, etc.
People may use libraries differently than they do bookstores. For
example, in an academic library, a huge percentage of the patrons are
trying to find numerous very specific materials (since they're working
from a bibliography). In a used bookstore, they're probably searching
for only a few specific things and might just be browsing to see
what's interesting. In this case, you can be well served by a much
looser system.
I'm no cataloging fanboy since I think many of the most time consuming
procedures amount to fidgeting with no benefit, but the bookstore
experience is overrated. Besides, many bookstores use cataloging data
(publisher created, CIP, etc) whether they state it or not...
kyle
Received on Wed Feb 11 2009 - 14:34:49 EST