Karen and Eric,
I think this takes us back to ongoing argument of what are the parameters of library catalogs and the differences from the type of "information systems" you describe that go beyond the library. Are you speaking of a system "out there" somewhere or of an interconnected system of library systems? We're talking about redefining library collections if that is the direction you are going. Yes, I speak of information resources (some of which may be documents) as things both tangible and intangible. People may seek a known-item or they may do category searches, they may "encounter" or stumble upon information. The 'system'--I'll use a generic term--by virtue of having rich representations of these resources that allows for the links and pathways between resources. We make those links and pathways, so your comment (pasted below) is illogical to me. Tell me your definition of "library data". Are are you talking about the descriptive cataloging separate from the more fruitful con!
tent access points that result from subject analysis?
Karen said:
>You have no place for library data in a "stumble-upon" situation. No role for linking from other resources or between resources. No following links and paths. >And therefore your bibliographic data probably doesn't support those functions, even though those are the key way of finding information on the Web, which is >the primary information space today.
As for following what people do with the information once they have it---this is not something we do as it far as organizing information. Our objective has always been limited to connecting people to the information they want and need. To follow them and observe what they do with it---how is this in our purview? Invasion of privacy, more like. Perhaps you mean what they do with the information after obtaining and are still in the system. Now, if they want to share how they remix, annotate, compare, tag, within the catalog---great! Let's do it. Let's add citation analysis data as well. Jonathan Furner talked of this a few years back at a Classification Research workshop (Philadelphia, i think )
All this reminds of Ranganathan's view of information ---multi-dimensional universe, information piece by piece, subject by subject, infinite, but bogged down by the tiresome variability in language.
Karen said:
>You have users looking for documents, not information. That already is a real limitation.
Not a limitation, just a different approach to finding and accessing. (and here I borrow a bit from my long ago dissertation research) It is a question of the use of structure when organizing and how we think of structured information. Much of the early work in information retrieval narrowed the notion of document retrieval from the intersection of a person with a structure of knowledge (a classification system, for example) to an intersection of a person's single question with a collection of documents and in this view seemed to conclude that a structure of knowledge was not necessary in order to retrieve documents that would answer a question. In essence, while some of us may ask "where in the structure (such as in a library classified by DDC or LCC) is the answer?" others, such as yourself, may counter with "No, where in the document is the answer?" where the document/resource/collection of information is out there in your "primary information space".
Forgive me, this is a listserv about the future of catalogs for libraries, yes? Or am I in the wrong place? ;-)
cheers,
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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________________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan [emorgan_at_ND.EDU]
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 11:57 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] User tasks--outdated? Why?
On Oct 19, 2009, at 12:47 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
> 2. Once users "obtain" your tasks end. But what users do AFTER
> obtaining
> is what really matters. They read, annotate, share, compare, re-
> mix,
> etc. Does bibliographic data have any role here? Not in your
> scenario.
Yes, I concur with this. Finding the information is only the first
(tiny) part of the problem to be solved. In fact, in today's world,
finding is easier and easer. What needs to be done is figuring out
ways to USE the information once it is found and acquired. I outlined
a number of these tasks in a previous post:
http://pln.palinet.org/wiki/index.php/Future_catalogs:_food_for_thought
--
Eric Morgan
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame
Received on Mon Oct 19 2009 - 14:10:09 EDT