[WEB4LIB] Re: NOTAmazon OR Google as a "corporate" role model: iTunes

[Karen Harker]

My question to members of those libraries which have implemented a browsing component of Web resources (i.e. "Links by Subject" or "Pathfinders" or "Subject Portals" (w/o the search component), what is their usage? Our experience with this method has not been very successful.  I'm not sure if the reason lies with our clients' preferences for finding or with our methods (terminology/taxonomy, presentation/display, etc.).  



Karen R. Harker, MLS
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-8946
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/library/

>>> Peter Murray <peter at OhioLINK.edu> 5/14/2005 7:39:51 AM >>>
Agreed.  Browsing by genre, subject, format, intended audience, and any
other facet available (or a combination of these) is very useful.
Browsing as a result of a search is even better.

The ability to browse requires rich metadata that iTunes (and Amazon)
are exploiting.  Browsing by author is moderately interesting
(everything by the same author).  Browsing by title is less interesting.
Browsing by album title is okay, but browsing by track title is not
useful.

It could also be (and is being) argued that a Google keyword search
isn't all that useful for index/abstract or bibliographic data.  (Roy
argues this the best I've seen so far.)


Peter

On 5/10/05 11:44 PM, Eric Hellman wrote:
| I think that libraries should consider returning to their historic
| roots that have nothing to do with "search". Forget search- a billion
| dollars says that Google and Amazon will do search way better than
| any real library on the planet, and libraries can now leverage these
| searching capabilities in very real ways.



-- 
Peter Murray                       http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/ 
Assistant Director, Multimedia Systems  tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338
OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information Network   Columbus, Ohio