Alexander Johannesen said:
>I suspect you're deluding yourself. You can never, ever hope to
>understand what your users want and need, nor what quality it should
>be presented in.
Wow, Alex. In the past, I have found many of your statements astounding for their casual and self-righteous arrogance. Your self-assuredness is sometimes amazing in the face of your clear lack of understanding of - or, indeed, sympathy for - the context of the problems that libraries face when it comes to technology and the possibilities for addressing those many problems. But this statement - indeed this whole post - is amazing for its utter cluelessness about the role an academic library plays in a university.
Most significant academic libraries employ people (called bibliographers) whose job is
a. to collect materials - books, e-resources, etc - in subject areas that corresponds to subject areas taught and researched by faculty and students of the university.
b. to stay abreast of current research and practice in their respective fields - many collection development librarians/bibliographers have advanced degrees in the field(s) for which they collect - and to use this knowledge to enhance collections and services the library provides students and faculty.
c. to stay in ongoing, *direct* communication with faculty and academic departments to ascertain their needs and to support those needs through new library acquisitions and research support.
d. to use appropriate tools to understand how collections are actually being used and to collect and analyze data to improve library services and collections.
*Of course* an academic library knows exactly who its users are. And indeed we do know a great deal about what those users "want and need". And, despite the fact that you blithely assume an academic library needs to compete directly with Google, we know very well we do not actually serve the same group of users that Google needs to serve.
--------------------------------------
Kevin M. Kidd, MA, MLIS
Library Applications & Systems Manager
Boston College Libraries
Phone: 617-552-1359
Fax: 617-552-1089
e-Mail: kevin.kidd_at_bc.edu
Blog: http://datadrivenlibrary.blogspot.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 7:42 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] opac live search
>> And your users are ... everyone, right? Even those who think they
>> might like the stuff you think you shouldn't collect, right?
On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 23:23, Jan Szczepanski <jan.szczepanski_at_ub.gu.se> wrote:
> Absolutly not. We collect just for our professors, teachers and students and
> that's all.
Professors, teachers and students ... that's quite a lot of people
with a lot of traffic. And you are certain that you will always know
exactly what they're after at all times? I think I get the picture;
you think you know your users to a tee, and you want your catalog to
reflect your predefined constrained domain. I'm just not into that,
nor do I think it's healthy (or reasonable) for anyone, including your
professors, teachers and students.
>>> A
>>> place where you just find the best journals and the best books when
>>> you need it.
>> But libraries don't fall into that category either?
> They do.
I suspect you're deluding yourself. You can never, ever hope to
understand what your users want and need, nor what quality it should
be presented in. This is you guys trying to work out a constrained
domain that suits you and hopefully your users, but in terms of users,
you will never succeed. You'll get plenty of good hits, and
bucketloads of bad ones (you may know this, or you may never hear
about it).
>> As to your other comments about commercial and free resources, I'd
>> just point out that commercial entities are pushing their stuff onto
>> Google far more than they are pushing it onto you. :)
>>
>
> So what? As I said, as a gatekeeper and collection builder my role is to
> keep about 80-90%
> of the "stuff" away from the library shelves contrary to the big
> algorithmic machine.
As long as your users are happy with being limited while computers get
better at sorting through what's available, then sure. How will you
know, though?
Alex
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Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
------------------------------------------ http://shelter.nu/blog/ --------
Received on Mon Mar 02 2009 - 21:19:57 EST