[WEB4LIB] Databases in your face?

[Karen Harker]

Ideally, use the term/name with which your users are most familiar and which new users can quickly identify.  However, you may have no choice...ISI is a real stickler on what we use for their products.  We just recently purchased the Journal Citation Report.  We wanted to use "Impact Factors" as the text of our link, but nooooooo, we have to use "Journal Citation Report". Our users don't know what this is necessarily, but what they want are the impact factors.  So that means using additional text to explain what it is.  On a page where real estate is king (we like to keep our home page w/in one screen (using the most common screen size of our affiliated users)), this requires creative thinking.  

I agree that, if it is possible, trying to keep the terms/names as self-explanatory as possible is a good practice.  But find out how your users think of these resources.  What do they call them?  And if they use the more cryptic terms, is it because they have been trained?  If so, what about new users?

The key to finding resources on our site has been the use of the most common terms to describe them.  So users who enter "impact factor" into "Search the Library" will get the JCR as a search result, along with a description of what JCR is.  We also include alternative words & spellings to allow for common misspellings (i.e. harrison's and harrisons and harrison; PsycLit, PsychLit, PsycInfo, PsychInfo).  

That was my input.


Karen R. Harker, MLS
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-1698
http://www.swmed.edu/library/

>>> Reeder Norm <Reeder.Norm at mail.ci.torrance.ca.us> 4/18/02 11:19:35 AM >>>
I'd like to ask if anyone has considered "re-wording" database names for
their public?  We tend (like most librarians) to organize things in
alphabetical lists like:
EBSCO
ProQuest
SIRS
UXL Discover

Seems to me while librarians know those brand names, the public doesn't.
Joan Fry Williams, the library consultant mentioned last November at the
California Library Association Conference that instead of labeling it
"SIRS", we should be saying "If your term paper is due tomorrow, click
here!".  Anyone know whether we are obligated to keep the "brand" name in
the link?  Do any of you use alternative database names?

Thanks
Norm

Norm Reeder
Library Services Manager
Torrance Public Library
3301 Torrance Blvd
Torrance, CA  90503
310-5950 



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