I thought they failed to draw conclusions in a couple of places.
The report says librarians care about existence of an ISBN but users
don't yet users want enhanced content like summaries, toc, etc. You
need the ISBN to link to that type of extra stuff.
Also, the librarians say duplicate records is a number one quality
problem. Users say linking to online content is the number one quality
issue. But OCLC is the one who is out there advocating creating lots
of separate records for every digital version of a work. Dumb idea.
I think they just want to sell more cataloging records and up their
Revenue. Users want to find a cite and link to online as well as
find out what libraries want it. So why would OCLC make what I'd
consider "duplicate" records by making all those extra records instead
of linking to the online content for a record for the print content?
I don't get that as a strategy.
Frances McNamara
University of Chicago
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 7:08 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want
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 - 11:31:06 EDT