> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 06:48, McHale, Nina <Nina.McHale_at_ucdenver.edu>
> wrote:
> > Are we trying to make catalogs into something that they don't really
> need to be?
>
> To know the answer to that question you need to know what it needs to
> be. So, what does it *need* to be?
>
> > Are we, professionally, really so jealous of what we perceive as the
> competition?
>
> Well, if you aren't, then perhaps this is a good time to start? Maybe
> that will kickstart a discussion of what the library needs to be (as
> well as their OPACs) ...
Nina's point, I think, is that we can get a clue about what the library/catalog *might* "need to be" from the workflows that users have already adopted to take advantage of widely available non-library information discovery tools that are better at retrieving information from large corpuses than what libraries can offer. Perhaps now we are wasting resources trying to compete where we can't compete. If most people are using Amazon and other tools to find relevant materials and then only using their library's catalog to see if the library has them, does it make sense for each library to focus its efforts on going against this tide and trying to beat Amazon, et. al at the resource discovery game? Or, should libraries focus their efforts more on injecting themselves into users' existing workflows--supporting those workflows and making it easier for people to use library tools in tandem with non-library tools?
(Or is the whole assumption about "most users'" workflows misleading/incorrect?)
As Kyle said much better than I can, libraries--as a whole or individually--need to figure out their niche, compete where it makes sense to compete, and thrive where users will use those library services that are most natural and convenient for them to use. I think it is a little bit delusional to believe that most of our users are going to use the library home page--or the library catalog--as their gateway to the world of digital information.
Maybe in this case what *is* trumps what we might believe *should be.*
Jason Thomale
Metadata Librarian
Texas Tech University
Received on Fri Feb 13 2009 - 13:48:07 EST