I'll concede Karen's point that doing a known item author/title search is part of what a catalog is designed to do, but it seems to be a very *small* part of what a catalog is designed to do, i.e., searching for a known author or title is just a small subset of functions in Cutter's list of the role of cataloging that Karen cited.
And you don't really need a catalog to do it, e.g., I used to do it with the old LCS circ system in Illinois 30 years ago. I could look up a known item, see if the library owned it, and see if it was on the shelf (and also request that it be delivered to me).
And now for a dangerously naive question. In another posting Karen said: "...in the 'perceptions of libraries' study that OCLC did, less than 2% of users *began* an information search in the library catalog. You go to the catalog when you've identified a resource and want to find out if you can get it through the library."
If "you go to the catalog when you've identified a resource and want to find out if you can get it through the library", then why do we maintain such elaborate catalogs?
Bernie Sloan
--- On Thu, 5/7/09, Karen Coyle <lists_at_KCOYLE.NET> wrote:
From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_KCOYLE.NET>
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Searching
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2009, 10:29 AM
B.G. Sloan wrote:
> 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.
>
This is *exactly* what library cataloging and catalogs have been designed to
do. Go back and read Cutter, and the role of cataloguing is:
1. to enable a person to find a book of which either
a. the author
b. the title
c. the subject
is known.
2. to show what the library has
d. by a given author
e. on a given subject
f. in a given kind of literature
3. to assist in the choice of a book
g. as to its edition
h. as to its character (literary or topical)
It's all about *what the library has*. And I love #1, where author, title
or subject is "known" to the user. FRBR doesn't go beyond this in
its user tasks: 'find' is 'find in this catalog'. And WorldCat?
That's the same thing over a large group of catalogs. If your catalog is
large enough it serves as a substitute for a bibliography (you assume it has
every book the author wrote), but that's a side-effect of the size, not an
actual purpose of the catalog.
kc
> 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.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
-- -----------------------------------
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 Thu May 07 2009 - 17:19:36 EDT