I haven't read it all either, but one point (p. 60)
"Subject Headings and Subject Information
When end-user survey respondents selected “more subject information” as an
enhancement priority, what did they mean? It is unlikely, given the relatively few
unique subject-rich words contributed to a catalog description by controlled subject
headings,9 that they mean more controlled subject headings. Given end-user survey
respondents’ top choices for catalog enhancement and what end-user focus group
participants reported, “more subject information” is more likely to be interpreted as
subject-rich data elements not generally included in a standard catalog description."
I don't know if I agree with the conclusion here. I think it would be just as likely that when people said they wanted "more subject information" it could be that they wanted more subjects to click on.
They go on to say:
'At the same time, controlled subject terms and phrases serve end users in a number
of ways: as subject-rich index terms; to support multilingual subject searching (when
records contain subject headings in more than one language); as facets for refi ning
or expanding searches; for browsing; as words or phrases linked to classifi cation
or other terminologies; as a factor in determining relevance ranking; and more.
To support these features, today’s catalogs rely on labor-intensive practices for
producing controlled subject headings. Given the growing concern that these
traditional methods are not sustainable going forward, it may be necessary for
libraries to fi nd more economical means to achieve the benefi ts to end users that
controlled subject vocabularies provide."
These conclusions certainly betray the researchers' own biases, repeating the old saw that "it's too labor-intensive" without providing any alternatives, such as, making tools to help catalogers become vastly more productive than they are now.
Most of the time an experienced cataloger can provide basic subject headings highly efficiently and is not that time-consuming, although some items can be more difficult of course. Certainly there are many possibilities today, but the unquestioned attitude is that almost everything we do is too labor-intensive. I wish somebody would research: what wouldn't be too labor intensive? What about subject headings made in 10 minutes? 5 minutes? 2 minutes?
And of course when products of our work is shared widely, the labor savings is that much greater.
Jim Weinheimer
> Well, it's going to take awhile to read it carefully, at 68 pages, but
> the message seems pretty clear:
>
> "Except for tables of contents and summaries, the catalog data quality
> requirements of end users and librarians tend to be different." p. 39
>
> End-users want: more links to full text, and evaluative information
> (reviews, ranking). They mainly care about holdings info, but then,
> that's probably why they turned to WorldCat in the first place, to find
> a local library with the item.
>
> OTOH, the top priority for librarians was to have duplicate records merged.
>
> This was a survey about WorldCat, so the results aren't the same as they
> would be if they were about a another OPAC. What's frustrating is I
> can't tell what the actual questions were, so it isn't clear if 'merge
> duplicates' was a choice offered to end-users. It would be great to see
> the actual survey instruments in order to be able to interpret the
> results. There are some oddities, like when they ask users what they
> consider to be the most essential items (which turn out to be holdings,
> availability, author, "item details" (?), links to online content),
> there is a footnote that says: "* Note: Title—the ubiquitous choice—was
> excluded in order to focus more attention on other data elements." This
> strikes me as being odd -- how did title become the 'ubiquitous choice'
> if it wasn't included in the survey?
>
> The bottom line is that I'm just not sure that this is valuable data, at
> least not as it is presented here. I thought other surveys, like the
> Perceptions of Libraries one, had at least the appearance of reliable
> methodology. This one has me scratching my head.
>
> kc
>
> B.G. Sloan wrote:
> > Just wondering what others might think of this OCLC report:
> >
> > Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want:
> >
> > Main web page:
> > http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/default.htm
> >
> > Executive Summary:
> > http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/summary.htm
> >
> > Full report:
> > http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/fullreport.pdf
> >
> > Bernie Sloan
> > Sora Associates
> > Bloomington, IN
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
> fx.: 510-848-3913
> mo.: 510-435-8234
> ------------------------------------
Received on Wed Apr 22 2009 - 07:31:38 EDT