Weinheimer Jim schrieb:
>
> But when you examine the Google Book interface closely, it's quite frightening for a librarian. For example, the "cataloging information" is mashed-up and placed on the very bottom of the "About this book" page, precisely the spot where Google knows no one will ever go.
Most peculiarly hidden is the subject search. Once you know it, you can
enter
subject:"Aboriginal australians -- history"
(or use the LCSH browser to do that for you)
and get relevant stuff. That search is very rigid. It doesn' work
without the quotes, nor with any letter left out or misspelled,
and there's no truncation. You have to enter the LCSH term exactly
in its correct spelling (like in any old OPAC) or you get a zero hit
message with some advice, but no list of headings that would match the
keywords or anything, no fuzzy search, word-stemming, spellchecking
or whatever - nothing.
So, they obviously do use the subject headings, but in a less than
half-hearted way. One can only wonder why. So please, try it out and
judge for yourself if LCSH is useful for GBS search or not. If not,
they might as well drop it with nobody the wiser.
B.E.
Received on Thu Apr 29 2010 - 05:07:31 EDT