[WEB4LIB] Re: Coughing up Coffman

[Roy Tennant]

First of all, let me say thank god we're finally talking about these
issues. Frankly, I can think of no more important topic to be debating
than how we should be presenting our resources to our users. Those of you
who have been lurking, waiting for someone else to say what you feel,
please stop lurking and jump in. There is likely no one better to make
your point than you.

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Laura Cohen wrote:

>2) With local OPACs taking on more and more electronic items (including
>the freebies on the Web), I see the ELL as quite a challenge to navigate.
>I hope this catalog would have the capacity to limit a search to an
>index, say, for books only. In fact, I wonder if such a catalog would
>have less indexes than the Berkeley catalog, when in fact it might need
>more.

I have a real problem with the index model of searching, which puts the
onus on the user to decide what to choose BEFORE they search. Why not
present the results in different categories, each with a brief explanation
of the kind of material they will find there?

>3) I can envision us getting inundated with requests from people who have
>not read the ELL record carefully and are requesting ILL for reference
>books, books in our special collections unit, building-only books, and
>other types of materials that don't circulate. 

If ILL requests were initiated via computer, rather than paper as is
often the case now, you can prevent these requests from happening (books
would be flagged as not being requestable).

> 4) Many people just want to see the holdings of their local library, the
> one they are  in at this very moment. They simply want to go into the
> stacks and get a book off the shelf. Let's not forget the needs of these
> folks. How easy will it be to identify these items in the ELL? 

I could not agree more. But let's remember that we already have this
information in our hands. For example, OCLC's WorldCat database knows who
has what. What about an interface that would sort the results into two
folders: one with holdings at your local library (or libraries, some of us
have borrowing privileges at more than one), one for holdings at
libraries within a 50 mile radius, and another for the rest? What I've
described is technically feasible NOW.

The bottom line here is that regardless of the relative merits or demerits
of the particular vision Steve Coffman has advanced, we must think
*imaginatively* ("out of the box") about these issues. If you don't
agree with that, then we're really, really in trouble. 
Roy