Yeah, it's important to seperate "how the catalog should look to the
user" from "what we need to do to get it there." You can easily cut off
the nose to spite the face here.
Users may not care about ISBNs in the record, but ISBNs in the record
(whether publicaly visible on the user's view or not) may be the best
way to provide services they DO care about. Users may not care that
there are multiple records for the same thing, but these multiple
records for the same thing may be what's getting in the way of a
feasible solution to things the user DOES care about, like finding out
about all methods of availability when they click on a record. These are
great examples, Frances.
Figuring out what the users want is only step 1. Step 2 is figuring out
the most cost effective and feasible way to GET them what they want.
This is much harder, and isn't always obvious, it isn't always what
appears most obvious from the "what the users want" step 1. It takes
concerted intellectual effort and research.
Although on another topic, my own issue, validated by the discovery that
one of the main things the users want is discovering availability --
OCLC, PLEASE make the link resolver link provided in worldcat.org 1)
More visible, 2) on the summary results page, not just the item detail
page, 3) Provide a mechanism for users to get their own libraries links
even when they are not on campus, hopefully one that works _without_
them having to go through the annoying process of creating a WorldCat
account. (See how Google Scholar handles this with no account creation
necessary!).
I've been asking for that for a while, personally.
Jonathan
Frances Dean McNamara wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
Received on Wed Apr 22 2009 - 11:40:42 EDT