Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> That's cool but that is NOT a browsable index. To browse a result set
> set means you first have to _have_ a result set. It will contain
> whatever matched your query - no more and no less. And that's the point.
> The real, true browse list lets you see what is actually there - and
> what's not there as well.
But in this day and age, there must be a way of very easily going *outside* the local database as well. Perhaps there is nothing on the subject within your own catalog, but there is something in a subscription-based journal database, or there may be something really great on the web for free, made available by a government or international agency.
I suspect that in our patrons' minds today they see no real difference in what is available "locally" and what is available from another website. If I can get it with exactly the same click of a button, what's the difference?
It reminds me of the early days of the rush onto the world wide web, when every company and organization absolutely had to get a web presence now, today. So, all these people (including myself) made hundreds of web pages, but how do you organize them? It seemed natural for everybody at the time to organize them by the departments and various divisions of your own local organization, so everything was arranged by department. The people inside the organization had little trouble finding these things, but finally came the new field of "information architecture" that announced that nobody outside the organization could find anything at all! Arranging everything by internal departments made no sense to them. So, everybody had to scramble to organize everything in different ways, so that someone from the outside with no knowledge of the inner workings of the organization could find something.
I think we're at the same point in libraries. If I can get a scan of a book from Google or the Internet archive, or from a paid-subscription service, as a patron, it makes absolutely no difference to me. I just need to be aware of it. The catalogs we make today must reflect this basic change in the way people approach materials on the web (including the way they view our catalogs).
Now, considering browsable indexes, I think they are one way of finding information. If used correctly--and configured correctly!--they can be very powerful. But it is not the only way, and it can certainly be improved a lot.
For example, in LCSH, there should be a way to open and close large sections, e.g. while browsing in the beginning of:
World War, 1939-1945
you shouldn't be forced to browse all the headings to get to the next main heading, but you should be able to open them up, e.g.
World War, 1939-1945 +
which would open the headings more, possibly separated by topical/geographic/chronologic/genre subdivision. I think everyone would understand it because this is how you go through files on a computer, and it seems to be very possible today. There may be many, many other ways of improving the browse interface over that of the card catalog.
Fortunately with today's powerful technology, I think we really can have it all!
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Thu Mar 12 2009 - 06:45:45 EDT