User tasks--outdated? Why?

Jim--I'm a bit stuck on why the FRBR user tasks are "outdated"--I think that is how you described them.  In just looking at the overall "picture" of how we've observed people interacting with information systems, what do you envison as more appropriate user tasks?  

For example, at the most fundamental level, don't people look for (find, locate) information that they need? They identify what is relevant and what isn't, tag  (select) the relevant and then obtain or acquire the actual resources.  This is very oversimplified, but it is how we approach teaching the user tasks in our basic information organization course ---the students create their own information system, based on a study of the users of the system and study of the types and attributes of resources in the system. We ask them to explain how specific attributes from the resources will help users to accomplish the four tasks, etc. 

Svenonius (Intellectual Foundation of Information Organizatin, 2000) discussed the objectives of a "full-feature bibliographic system" --redefining the "find" task to "locate" in order to better emphasize both the finding objective and collocating objective as discussed in Cutter, Lubetzky, and such.  (this is my oversimplified quicky explanation of what she discusses in her Chapter 2)  --her "tasks" include : 

(these may not format properly--apologies in advance)

   --   to locate entities in a file or database as the result of a search using attributes or relationships of the entities:
      1a. To find a singular entity-that is, a document (finding objective)
      1b. To locate sets of entities representing
      All documents belonging to the same work
      All documents belonging to the same edition
      All documents by a given author
      All documents on a given subject
      All documents defined by "other" criteria;
    
      -- to identify an entity (that is, to confirm that the entity described in a record corresponds to the entity sought or to distinguish between two or more entities with similar characteristics);
   
      -- to select an entity that is appropriate to the user's needs (that is, to choose an entity that meets the user's requirements with respect to content, physical format, and so on or to reject an entity as being inappropriate to the user's needs);
    
      -- to acquire or obtain access to the entity described (that is, to acquire an entity through purchase, loan, and so on or to access an entity electronically through an online connection to a remote computer;
    --  to navigate a bibliographic database (that is, to find works related to a given work by generalization, association, and aggregation; to find attributes related by equivalence, association, and hierarchy.

It strikes me, too, that we talk of user tasks, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to speak of them as "objectives" ?  I'm just trying to get a sense of what you would rather see in place of what FRBR currently defines.

thanks,
S.

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Shawne D. Miksa, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
College of Information
University of North Texas
email: Shawne.Miksa_at_unt.edu
http://courses.unt.edu/smiksa/index.htm
office 940-565-3560 fax 940-565-3101
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