[WEB4LIB] Decision tree for Web resources

[Michael McCulley]

A few notes on this good thread.. hope they are helpful, because it appears
to me several good convergences may be on the horizon, with a little work,
some *great* tools, which are becoming more and more needed..

For Jim, on the original question, I see something different that might work
for you, and there are a number of static and dynamic ways you can do it.
The "How Do I" family of guides is not a bad low-end solution for this
problem; I do believe we are overloading our users with the wealth of
information we can provide for them, and yet not giving them enough help on
one of the most important areas: selection of the source(s) for their needs.

There are a number of starting points here, like the listings noted below
from Michigan State (just a random example, actually) that start from the
premise of the information need, and suggest paths and strategies. "I'm
looking for a biography," or "I need a copy of a journal article," or "I
need to find a scientific fact." This can be done hierarchically, but the
number of starting nodes might be kept small enough, and the detail-level
nodes only facet perhaps at some given fine-tuning, like 3 per starting
node. With that model, you could build a reasonably decent tool.

See http://www.lib.msu.edu/libinstr/guides/findingarticles.htm for the
starting point for many of these type of listings and guides; and here,
http://www.lib.msu.edu/guides/reference/GS00.html, for their Getting Started
guides. I envy these great resources, not because they aren't "tools" as the
posts discuss, but because they are user-friendly, intellectually-rich, and
yes, taken human effort to maintain. Something tells me even with the best
new tool, with great Artificial Intelligence algorithms, we'll still want
these types of guides from information professionals. We probably will
continue to have a bit of both --human-crafted guides of various sorts; and
automated tools to help "do" the selection job, or at least, try to do it.

Here's their text about the Getting Started series:

"The MSU Libraries offer literally hundreds of research tools, so it can be
confusing to know where to begin. For major subject areas, disciplines and
fields of study, guides to "Getting Started" are available. These can also
be found using the library Electronic Resources lists. All sixty-six guides
are listed here for convenience. Each guide typically notes a few key
bibliographic indexes, relevant materials in the print format Reference
collection, and the name of the librarian assigned to the topic as a subject
specialist."

I do favor the R&D on the new tool for finding "starting points" of quality.
There's no reason any new tool of this type couldn't be a starting point
(better than what we often give users now), and grow into a more "automated"
tool later.  I'm not sure an algorithmic programming solution will be
possible at a high quality level, or in most cases, but it's certainly worth
trying.

For the ideas in the thread, one of the posts gave me pause.. they are
talking about something like DIALINDEX, the "free" (no cost) database INDEX
that DIALOG provides; it was the doorway to finding out where your answer(s)
might be, and conducted the searches, and provided a ranked list of
databases with "hits." You could refine and dig and then make your databases
searches precise in certain ones; this was before meta- and federated
searching came along. The problem for this "universal" DIALINDEX tool for a
library or site is the same one facing anyone who goes down this road --
what "universe" of possible sources is included? Or, how much of the
information space will I hunt through for the leads to the best? Sounds a
bit like Google, doesn't it? The more information in, the higher the quality
of the results. I'm not sure how it fits in the search for electronic
resource "advisor" tools, but there you go..

Some of the companies I worked with -AOL, Netscape, Inktomi, DIALOG,
Information Access Company- worked long and hard on internal systems for
these types of tools "about" their resources --helping users find and choose
from their information products. The "More Like This" programming is an
outgrowth of this type of meta-harvesting of internal meta-index pools.
Something along these lines, too, is present in the new Web-harvested
product at http://www.answers.com/ 

Imagine if we (Libraries and their IT teams) could "do that" for our own
resources (or those accessible to us), and rank and display them uniquely
for each unique "user,"  and allow them to personalize the results, and so
on. It's sounding like a convergence of MyYahoo! and DIALINDEX a bit
(smile), and or MySearchPage, or with a nod to Eric Lease Morgan, MyLibrary.

Brave new world..

Best,
Michael
-- 
P. Michael McCulley aka DrWeb
mailto:drweb at san.rr.com
San Diego, CA 
http://drweb.typepad.com/

Quote of the Moment:
 How do you know it's summer in Seattle? Rain's warm!
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:50:51 PM 
 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: web4lib at webjunction.org 
>[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jim Campbell
>Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:44 AM
>To: Multiple recipients of list
>Subject: [WEB4LIB] Decision tree for Web resources
>
>We offer users a lot of information and a lot of paths to that 
>information.
>Both are a good thing and both can sometimes get in the way of actually
>finding the specific information a user needs. Adding an Open 
>URL resolver
>and working on metasearch should have simplified things a bit, 
>but at least
>for now more options have just created even more confusion for 
>both staff
>and users.  We need some hierararchy that can establish what the best
>approach is for a given need.
>
>I've seen/heard of various attempts at reader's advisors, 
>asking questions
>to narrow down a user's options, but off hand I can't remember 
>where or what
>they are. Can anyone suggest good examples of this sort of 
>thing? Perhaps
>more importantly, if they're out there do people actually use them?
>
> 
>- Jim Campbell
> 
>Digital Access Coordinator and
>Librarian for German
>University of Virginia Library
>Voice: 434-924-4985
>E-Mail: Campbell at Virginia.Edu