[WEB4LIB] Re: Two steps forward, three steps back

[Karen Coyle]

On Wed, 2004-12-22 at 07:34, Ryan Eby wrote:

> 
> Perhaps a better discussion would be on what are good defaults for a
> library catalog search. What are patrons expecting? 

Yes, this is a question that we definitely need to ask, and to answer.
You're probably aware that at various times there have been efforts to
define standards for search and retrieval in library systems, and that
none of these efforts has come to fruition. The closest we have are the
search standards for Z39.50, which essentially define basic search types
that every catalog should be able to do. But those searches are not
necessarily the ones that are presented in the user interface.

One of the motivating reasons for the normalization of cataloging and
card catalogs was to make it easy for users to go from library to
library to continue their research. This was in the late 1800's and
librarians recognized that scholars often had to use many library
collections in the course of their studies. Well, the same is true
today, but our user interfaces not only look very different between
libraries but the results from  searches can vary enormously. So the
question is not only "what are the system defaults right out of the
box?" but "if you call it a keyword search, what should it do?" 

The Z39.50 profiles (i.e. Bath) offer an interesting analysis of the
elements of a search (i.e. left anchored, truncated or not, etc.) that
make it possible to talk about the nature of a search. Z isn't about the
user interface, but it creates a vocabulary that could be applied to
user searches so that defaults could be clearly and unambiguously
defined.

kc

> >
-- 
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Karen Coyle
Digital Library Specialist
http://www.kcoyle.net
Ph: 510-540-7596 Fax: 510-848-3913
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