Please forgive any duplication. I sent this earlier under a different subject and it appeared to get lost.
I agree this [browse in Australia's National Library catalog] is good news and it meets two important criteria for me as a browse result display: it provides cross-references and it is displayed in alphabetic order. The Endeca-based front end used in my library does not yet include cross-references or subject browse.
My previous ILS was NOTIS-based and was able to display the titles alphabetically simultaneously with the alphabetized headings enabling users to consider various names together with their works. This was often useful when the author had a name like Jones that might be expressed inconsistently in article citations and on books and one needed to be aware (in developing the background section for a dissertation, for example) of all works in the library by that author. My current ILS cannot do this, nor does the VuFind browse as far as I can tell. I've been told that it would be very demanding to develop such a browse. Possibly for some people there is a little appreciation of the value of such a browse, but not enough to motivate them to make the necessary investment of system resources?
Clearly, my vote is yes we do require browse searching in a research university. It seems to me that scholarly use of the library is not well-served by a catalog that does not at least provide the cross-references available in authority files and I have not seen that provided without browse. Inconsistency of transliteration of foreign names is a case that dramatically demonstrates this. If your library primarily serves undergraduates and does not offer programs in foreign languages using non-roman alphabet literature you may have less critical need for browse than does a research library with significant collections in foreign languages. However, even in a research library there are some librarians whose work centers on the sciences which are relatively more periodical-based or on helping undergraduates write term papers and they may fail to appreciate the need for cross-references as much as those serving graduate students and faculty in literature or history. It does not m!
atter to me that those scholars who need cross-references to help them do their work more efficiently are outnumbered by undergraduates or scientists. If we invest in the collections, then we should invest in the tools necessary to deliver them optimally.
Thanks for reading this,
Jimmie
Received on Thu Mar 12 2009 - 11:44:03 EDT