Weinheimer Jim wrote:
> With traditional library tools, a person's feelings are irrlevant. A search result may make them happy, angry, sad, or bored; it simply doesn't matter. Since search results today have so much on feelings today, I think we must consider what it means to "improve services" in such a scenario as well.
>
Hmm, I'm not sure that with traditional library tools, a patron's
feelings are irrelevant to operationally/empirically measuring success
of search. Jim, how are you thinking of opertionally and empirically
measuring success of a patron's search with traditional library tools,
that is based on objective standards? I'm having trouble thinking of a
way, but maybe I'm not just creative enough in my research methods.
A patron wants to find something. They type something into a traditional
library search tool (or they go to the card catalog, if you want to get
really traditional!). They find some records. How do we measure,
whether in Google _or_ in a traditional library catalog, how well the
results gave them what they needed... without asking them?
Jonathan
Received on Thu Oct 29 2009 - 11:58:44 EDT