Re: use & understanding

From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_nyob>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:39:51 -0700
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Quoting Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>:

> When it comes to "next-generation library catalogs" I think they  
> ought to evolve into tools for use & understanding,

I agree. And this will be a good part of the talk I'm giving at LITA  
Forum later this week.

I also think that users do not want MORE information, they want BETTER  
information about the resources they encounter. When you retrieve  
mountains of stuff, there better be a some pretty good information  
about that stuff that will allow you to select what you want. And I  
don't mean whether or not the country of publication is included in  
brackets in the publication statement. I mean real evaluative  
information: this is considered a basic book in x field of study; this  
isn't already on your reading list; and lots of other things I can't  
think of at the moment.

kc

> and to demonstrate this idea we here at Notre Dame have begun to  
> incorporate text mining links into our holdings. From a blog posting  
> describing the digitization of some our Catholic pamphlets:
>
>   In order to practice with workflow, we selected about 30 of these
>   pamphlets and enhanced their bibliographic records to denote their
>   digital nature. These enhancements included URLs pointing to PDF
>   versions of the pamphlets as well as URLs pointing to the text mining
>   interfaces. When the enhancements were done we added them to the
>   catalog. Once there they “flowed” to the “discovery system” (Primo). You
>   can see these records from the following URL — http://bit.ly/qcnGNB  At
>   the same time we extracted the plain text from the PDFs and made them
>   accessible via a text mining interface allowing the reader to see what
>   words/phrases are most commonly used in individual pamphlets. The text
>   mining interface also includes a concordance —
>   http://concordance.library.nd.edu/app/  These later services are
>   implemented as a means of demonstrating how library catalogs can evolve
>   from inventory lists to tools for use & understanding.
>
>   http://bit.ly/oxIyPO
>
> IMHO, find & get are not the problems to be solved in today's  
> environment. Everybody can find & get with ease. In fact, we are  
> still "drinking from the proverbial fire hose". The problem to solve  
> now-a-days is ways to make content more meaningful.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University of Notre Dame
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Wed Sep 28 2011 - 00:40:40 EDT