Stephens, Owen wrote:
> If we agree on this (or at least that thesaurus browse offers specific
> challenges for User Interface) what the best ways of presenting the power of
> the thesauri to the user is so they can exploit it to its fullest potential?
Absolutely, and I don't think anybody has done a good enough job yet, but I think there is room for personalization. Aquabrowser is all the rage, but I confess, I don't care for it. For example, the one at Queen's Library http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/ is innovative and cool, but I personally find it more or less incoherent. I fully confess that is my own opinion, and others may find it the best in the world. That's fine, but let me choose another interface. Maybe I want an A-Z browse in classic LC style, or perhaps I want more of a ontology view. I have a feeling I would like a view of the headings in Grokker, but perhaps I would hate it when I saw it.
But I think the main point is that systems are flexible enough to offer many, if not all, of them.
So, while I personally don't care for the Aquabrowser view, I applaud it nevertheless because at least there is some real innovation going on, using our current metadata and trying something new. It may fail, but so what? It's better to have tried so that we can learn and move forward. This is exactly what we need.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Fri Mar 13 2009 - 11:54:09 EDT