I have to admit the use of 'See: ' doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me - if we (librarians/systems) know what the synonym is, then why do we feel the need to 'educate' the user (see the What Users Understand thread)?
This aside, I still wonder about the nature of browse - any literature I can look at? In the physical space I can see browsing happens all the time - it is clearly a way of exploring the environment. I can see from observation that Library users like to browse the shelves (be interesting to know if structured classification was a reaction to this or a pre-requisite?).
How do users 'browse' online - we 'browse' the web - this is about following links one to another, not about going through and ordered list - but we still (tend to) build online catalogues as ordered lists of one type or another. I'm not judging at this point, just trying to understand what we ought to try to achieve.
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 Dan Matei
> Sent: 12 March 2009 20:12
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Browse functionality (was Whose elephant is it,
> anyway? (the OLE project))
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Lundgren,Jimmie Harrell" <jimlund_at_UFLIB.UFL.EDU>
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:55:31 -0400
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Browse functionality (was Whose elephant is it,
> anyway? (the OLE project))
>
> > LCSH search results that redirect users from synonyms to the headings
> used can be very useful. For example, since I
> > catalog a lot of agricultural reports, irrigation is a topic I
> frequently encounter. Authors use various terms such
> > as drip irrigation, microirrigation, trickle irrigation for
> essentially the same process. A browse subject search for
> > drip irrigation displays:
> > Drip irrigation
> > See: Microirrigation.
>
> Sorry... Why (beside the card catalog tradition) has the user to make
> an extra click to get to the titles ?
>
> Why not:
>
> Drip irrigation (we prefer "microirrigation", but we see what you mean
> :-)
>
> and the whole line is a clickable link ?
>
>
> >
> > Users can click on Microirrigation and retrieve the various titles we
> have in our library about this process,
> > including those where the author called it trickle irrigation. It
> might be difficult for users to think of all the
> > synonyms for terms in order to retrieve comprehensively using keyword
> searches, especially if there are foreign
> > language sources that might be of value. A casual user might easily
> be satisfied with a few titles on the subject,
> > but one who requires more complete results might have to work a lot
> harder or possibly produce inferior scholarship
> > due to unrealized poor retrieval.
> >
> > Jimmie
>
> Dan Matei
>
> PS. I am amazed that the term "recall" did not turn up. So old fashion
> ?
Received on Fri Mar 13 2009 - 05:57:20 EDT