I've noticed this when talking with grad students and faculty. They don't use the catalog as a resource discovery tool. They tend to use the catalog to check the availabilty of an already known item: Does the library own it? If so, is it on the shelf? Heck, I do it myself, and my job used to entail working with online catalogs.
Granted, I'm not talking about a representative sample of catalog users, but it is pretty common for people I know (some who are quite familiar with how to use online catalogs) to use other tools for resource discovery and use the catalog just to check availability.
Bernie Sloan
SORA Associates
Bloomington, IN
--- On Wed, 5/6/09, Ed Jones <ejones_at_NU.EDU> wrote:
From: Ed Jones <ejones_at_NU.EDU>
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Searching
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 5:37 PM
I'm going to make a confession here. Typically when I'm looking for a
library book for my own use, I will search for it (via Google) in
Amazon.com or Google Book Search. Then when I find it--which I almost
invariably do--I click on its ISBN, an action which automatically
triggers a search (via LibX and xISBN) in the local National University
Library catalog for that edition and any closely related editions.
While this strategy doesn't work for older in-copyright books (or the
dwindling number of contemporary books published without ISBNs), it
works in an overwhelming number of cases. So much so that it's become
my default search strategy.
Ed Jones
National University (San Diego, Calif.)
Received on Wed May 06 2009 - 18:41:30 EDT