[Web4lib] re: How to label the OPAC

[David Walker]

Brandon Dennis wrote:

>> [Catalog is] still a term that's commonly 
>> linked to a list of items in the library.

Indeed, the problem is not that the term “library catalog” is meaningless, or completely foreign, but rather that it is *misleading*.

I think some of our users do think of the term “catalog” as being a list of items in the library.

But an OPAC is not a *complete* list of the library’s holdings.  If I want to search for journal articles or business data (things that are just as much “items in the library” as books) I have to use a different system altogether.

Simply renaming the library catalog to “Books & more” is not a full solution.  What does the “and more” include?  Journal articles?  No.  Electronic Reserves?  Maybe.  But there is no way for me to know that unless you tell me.

I’ve seen users repeatedly try to use the library catalog to search for journal articles in a library.  They’re not dumb.  That makes complete sense.  It’s the label that is confusing.

If we want to insist on using the term “catalog” in libraries, then I would argue that the library’s *website* better approaches that meaning than the ILS system.


>> In my opinion, the best way to create a 
>> navigation is to find as few words as possible
>> to be direct enough to lead the visitor to where 
>> they want to go

I completely disagree.  Using as few terms as possible leads to a top-down navigation that forces users into conceiving of their task in terms of the hierarchical scheme the designer has used.  That’s not how people navigate web site.

If you follow the information architecture literature, especially what has been written about information foraging models, you’ll see that bottom-up navigations that use many key terms prove much more successful, since users scan pages and can quickly see the terms that match their task.  We need more terms, not less.  The trick is to organize the terms in meaningful ways.