Again, I would like to emphasize what I, as a user, from a browse search. If I search "World War, 1939-1945" I want to get an idea of what are the range of materials available with that topic. Obviously, this almost always means specific aspects of the topic "World War, 1939-1945." When people used the card catalog and especially the red books, you could see a lot of the subdivisions at one glance since there was a lot more in an LCSH printed page than would ever work online. They also used the "May Subd Geog" or headings with that had [American, British, etc.] which shortened things a lot. Did regular people know and understand this? Probably not. But if you knew and understood, it worked pretty well.
Online however, I've got to wade into these headings. For example, in the catalog you mention, I searched "World War, 1939-1945" and naturally, got a lot of hits. Now, I want to get an idea of the richness of the subdivisions, but what I get is a browse list of headings used in the catalog. After several pages, I'm still looking at: World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations [nationality].
So, I think, "All right already. I understand you have lots on air missions of WWII, but what else do you have?" But unless I browse through all of them, (ha!) I will never have even an inkling of what is there.
This is why I keep saying that the problem is not the headings I really think people want the materials in your catalog arranged under, e.g. "World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations, Japanese -- Pictorial works" but nobody--absolutely *nobody*--will ever type something like that in. The only ways someone can find it is: 1) they find a similar book through keyword or a reference and they discover the heading, or 2) they browse for it. But people give up browsing online after a few screens, this has been shown. Essentially, nothing online has yet replaced the utility of the red books.
This is why I believe very strongly in the necessity for browsing, because otherwise people could never, ever find these headings. Browsing needs to be reconsidered in the modern age however.
Jim Weinheimer
Bernhard,
>
> Just to understand what you are looking for in terms of Browse. The NLA
> implementation of VuFind has what I would regard as a Browse function - you can
> Browse the following:
>
> Names at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Browse/Names?browse=names&from=
> Subjects at
> http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Browse/Subjects?browse=subjects&from=
> Callnumbers at
> http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Browse/Subjects?browse=subjects&from=
> Series at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Browse/Series?browse=series&from=
>
> All these options are available in the user interface at
> http://catalogue..nla.gov.au/Browse/Home ('Browse' is an option in the
> horizontal menu under the main 'catalogue' banner)
>
> This page also offers Title and Uniform Title browsing, but these seem not to
> work in the same way at the moment (I've sent feedback about this)
>
> Is this browsing as you mean it? If not, what would you require additionally?
>
> (also you question the scalability - what scale are you thinking of? I'd guess
> that NLA is reasonably large - but I can't easily find a figure for the number
> of bib records - but obviously it may not be as large as other national
> libraries or consortium collections)
>
> Owen
>
>
>
>
> Owen Stephens
> Assistant Director: eStrategy and Information Resources
> Central Library
> Imperial College London
> South Kensington Campus
> London
> SW7 2AZ
>
> t: +44 (0)20 7594 8829
> e: o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> > [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg
> > Sent: 12 March 2009 06:42
> > To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Whose elephant is it, anyway? (the OLE project)
> >
> > Kent Fitch wrote:
> > >
> > > The National Library of Australia's implementation of VuFind added
> > > browse (and I believe offered its patch back to the VuFind project);
> > > see for example
> > >
> > >
> > http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Browse/Subjects?browse=subjects&from=straw+
> > man
> > >
> > > It is an error to assert that SOLR/Lucene is "ill suited"
> to the
> > > purpose of supporting index browse because it supports it very
> > > efficiently.
> > >
> > That's good news, and it doesn't look too bad.
> > Was it made part of the standard then? If no, why not?
> > Where can I read about SOLR's browse support functions?
> >
> > Is there also name, title, and keyword browsing? I mean, true browsing,
> > up and down, a sorted list of titles, names, or keywords. For subject
> > headings, it looks almost right, but I don't see the same for
> > the other aspects.
> >
> > B.Eversberg
Received on Thu Mar 12 2009 - 10:52:19 EDT