To the question of when alphabetic order is useful, there is one case that I would advocate for, and that is known title searching. I personally find it extremely annoying to go to WorldCat, or Amazon for that matter, and enter an exact title for an item I am looking for, and the title I want may not even show up on the first page of the results. I don't appreciate keyword searching when I want a specific title, and in fact, sometimes I find keyword searching to be an impediment to finding the title I am looking for.
Now I don't know how often regular folks want to do known title searching, with results in alphabetic order, but I personally would like to have that as a search option available in any of the search interfaces I use.
Irene Patrick
Information Technology Librarian
NC Department of Cultural Resources
State Library of North Carolina, Government & Heritage Library
4641 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4641
Ph: (919) 807-7413 Fax: (919) 733-1843
irene dot patrick at ncdcr dot gov
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Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my agency.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 10:29 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Video of "Think Different"
Dan, yes, I too think that there might be times when alphabetical order is useful. The big question (and I don't have an answer) is: when is alphabetical order the best order for the user? If we have a case where it is the appropriate order, then we should use it. But before we do (because it would be very easy to fall into an assumption that alphabetical order is "best") we should really investigate all of the options we have for getting the user to the "right stuff." In particular, alpha order requires some very precise knowledge on the part of the user (like how to spell a person's name), not to mention that its usefulness diminishes in very large and very complex lists. And libraries seem to specialize in that latter case. I remember that filing in the card catalog at the main library at UC Berkeley was so onerous that everyone, even the director, put in at least one hour a week as a show of solidarity for the lower level workers who had to do it as their main job. As a!
user of that enormous (multi-lingual) catalog, even as a library school student, I found it very difficult to navigate even though "alphabetical order" should be "easy."
The interesting thing about your KWIC example is that the idea that you put things in order by the "key concept" was actually used in medieval encyclopedias, according to Prof. Ann Blair, who wrote "Too Much to Know" about information overload before 1700. That is an interesting case of a shared world view, because obviously everyone had to have the same idea of what is the "key concept."
There's an irony with ranked ordering which is that when it works it greatly satisfies users, but it is not a "known order" and cannot be understood by the user (and therefore cannot be manipulated by the user). Ranking is one of the "solutions" to dealing with retrieved sets that are beyond human scale, but in most cases it is not interactive.
Topic maps and facets give us some interactivity, but I think that it would be interesting to posit ways that users could understand and interact with ranking. We sometimes give them the option to sort by date (earliest, latest), but are there other orders that could be useful?
Most popular (e.g. most library holdings)? Most cited? I dunno, and I'd love to hear ideas.
kc
On 11/11/12 5:28 AM, Dan Matei wrote:
> Thanks a lot ! Thought provoking ...
>
> I agree with you most of the time. Just on one point I'm not sure...
>
> Call me old fashioned, but I still see some value in the lexicographic ordering.
>
> When my user types "Paris", I want to show him not just the Paris
> (city in France) page (as Wikipedia does). I'm interested that (s)he sees (on the first screen) some entries "around" Paris (France), such as:
>
> Paris (Kentucky, United States)
> Paris (Texas, United States)
> Paris (Greek mythology)
>
> or even:
>
> John of Paris (French theologian)
> Commune of Paris (1871)
> An American in Paris
>
>
>
> Or, maybe, not only alphabetical order, but the good old KWIC ?
>
> Dan
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------
> Dan Matei
> director, Direcția Cercetare, Evidență a Patrimoniului Cultural Mobil,
> Imaterial și Digital [Movable, Intangible and Digital Heritage
> Department] (aka CIMEC) Institutul Național al Patrimoniului [National
> Heritage Institute] București [Bucharest, Romania] tel. (+4)021 317 90
> 72; fax (+4)021 317 90 64 www.cimec.ro
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net>
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 07:45:52 -0800
> Subject: [NGC4LIB] Video of "Think Different"
>
>> The video of my talk at emtacl12, entitled "Think Different", is now
>> available on Vimeo:
>>
>> http://vimeo.com/user14540364/review/53142026/629c4070c4
>>
>> The talk relates strongly to recent discussions on this list.
>>
>> Links to other emtacl12 videos are here:
>>
>> http://emtacl.com/presentations/
>>
>> It was an excellent conference, and hopefully there will be another
>> one in 2014 (it is settling in to an "every 2 years" schedule).
>>
>> kc
>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Tue Nov 13 2012 - 10:33:27 EST