No, the formal testing thing didn't quite happen yet partly because speed of the developments outstripped the capacity of the testing process, (by which I mean by the time the tests were scheduled and implemented the catalog had changed again). Input such as demand for new features and improvements to existing services comes from those people directly helping the users at the service desks and the chat reference services in the libraries at the 11 universities in our consortia, and through them from the users themselves. No, we weren't working from old hat assumptions or abstractions based on the flatly online world of Google.
Eating catalogers for breakfast? What do you mean by that? Thanks,
Jimmie
Jimmie Lundgren
Associate Chair & Contributed Cataloging Unit Head
Cataloging & Metadata Dept.
Smathers Library
PO Box 117004
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7004
352-273-2725
352-392-7365 (fax)
jimlund_at_ufl.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 8:41 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] After MARC...MODS?
On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 22:24, Lundgren,Jimmie Harrell
<jimlund_at_uflib.ufl.edu> wrote:
> Ugh, I'm not sure I accept your view as the ultimate definition of what the world wants.
Good!
> Users and public services librarians want icons displayed to visually cue
> users in on what kind of thing is being described such as book, online
> resource, dvd, map, etc.
This is terribly old hat, is in't? Never mind, the important question
is, how did you find out your users wants this? If the answer is
through some UX testing, then you're testing on the status quo, you're
not testing the future.
> Catalogers have nothing to do with it. We will adapt and work with
> whatever comes along, as we have continually adapted to change
> after change in cataloging rules and in MARC formats since the
> introduction of online cataloging in the 1970's.
Um, how are you going to adapt and work with whatever comes along, if
what comes along is something that eats catalogers for breakfast?
> I don't think we'll keep quiet about portrayals of the bibliographic
> universe or user needs as simple, however.
What do you mean here?
Regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
--- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---
Received on Thu Apr 22 2010 - 09:25:16 EDT