Thoughts on Web Site Subject Headings

[george at library.caltech.edu]

A couple of basic issues have not been touched on in this thread.

1)  How many resources are you trying to describe?

2)  Academic colleges & departments are funding and political constructs.

If you only have 2 general purpose undergraduate databases available, why
should they be listed under 17 different departments/majors?  Alternatively,
if you have 275 biology ejournals, is Biology/Ejournals sufficiently fine
grained to prevent information overload?

The answers to both of those questions will be intrinsically local in
nature.  How well is the library funded?  What is the mission and community
the library is intended to serve?  How likely is a web design going to
overwhelm the intended audience if dozens of options are presented on a
single screen?  The obverse also holds -- how much hand holding in the web
design is likely to lead to a feeling the library is dumbing down the
presentation too much, requiring too many intermediate choices before
offering a small set of finely targeted choices.

The political nature of the origin and evolution academic departments may
cause the research needs of faculty and students to align poorly with the
perceived realm of scholarly inquiry.

A couple of suggested rules of thumb:

Know your audience -- design to assist, but not insult the intelligence of
the primary clientele.

Avoid too much localization -- creating categories that are too tightly tied
to the local culture may make the website useless to outsiders (read
potential students, faculty employees) and creates a steep learning curve
for new arrivals.

If these seem to be competing, even conflicting guidelines, they are.
Design is more art than science, and balancing the opposing forces is
critical to utility and success.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
Caltech, 1-43
Pasadena, CA  91125-4300
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681