[Web4lib] Interesting Web/Library 2.0 data(wasparticpationSkillsfor Library 2.0 Leaders)

[Mark Costa]

What are we arguing about? Oh, simple and easy to use versus complex and
powerful.

LexisNexis and all its various sub-components have a steep learning curve,
yet once people develop a proficiency with the interface they are happy with
its precision.

For our purposes, Google is all about one thing: the search. Their page
layout screams it; the box sits dead center and there is very little else to
distract from that message. Yet when you account for the entire information
seeking process of a person, you will notice that it is very complex. It
involves both browsing and searching. That is why Yahoo continuously
generates more page visits than Google [1]. Google happens to be more
successful because they do a better job of monetizing visits and they
developed ways to break their services up to allow them to be easily
integrated into other people's pages. I think we came to a general consensus
that libraries need to do a better job of making their content portable,
perhaps by leveraging XML.

I have two quick anecdotes that may generage some discussion.

1) Is anyone here a history major, or perhaps used the ABC-CLIO history
databases? If so, you'll probably understand what I am about to say.
ABC-CLIO, with their decidely un-simple interface allows researchers to
search for articles by the time period they cover. If I remember correctly,
you can search by years, decades, and centuries. I have not found a better
example of how a database caters to its users.

2) I am 3 months away from beginnng to work on my PhD. I know I want nothing
to do with the library's web site. I hope that they proxy all of their
databases, so I can post the links to del.icio.us, grab the feed and stick
them on my Netvibes page. I also hope that my favorite journals use RSS,
because I do not want to go to a database to search every month. It also
would be pretty hot if I can turn a search query into a feed, just to see if
anything else is published outside of my favorite journals. Do you know what
else would be nice, if I could easily navigate through citations so that I
can grab articles easily, and perhaps see what research topics are
tangentially related to what I am researching, which may generate new topics
of interest. And when I do a search, I won't want the entirety of a
library's collection in the search results, because my research does not
even remotely touch on the what's contained in the library's digital
collection of 18th century love letters or what have you. It would even be
more amazing if libraries somehow generated metadata on the charts, graphs,
and table data within reports and articles so I can extract that information
more effectively. And please make it easy for me to share what I find with
my colleagues, that would be great.

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but what makes it really hard for us to
do anything is the onerous copyright protections on what we try to
disseminate. Perhaps this entire debate is a byproduct of the fact that
whether we choose to go complex or stay simple, we are constantly forced
with the need to force our users through hoops to get the actual content. I
guess no matter how good of a job we do in designing an interface or site,
our users will be turned off when they have to look at something like this:

*Academy of Management journal*  *(0001-4273)*
          from 03/01/1963 to 12/31/2001 in JSTOR Arts and Sciences IV
Collection<http://ck5zj6hy9n.search.serialssolutions.com/log?L=CK5ZJ6HY9N&D=JAV&&J=ACADOFMANJO&U=http://www.jstor.org/journals/00014273.html>
 from
1974 to 06/01/2005 in AWC Library Holdings  from 03/01/1987 to 12/01/2001 in
ProQuest Research
Library<http://ck5zj6hy9n.search.serialssolutions.com/log?L=CK5ZJ6HY9N&D=PRA&&J=ACADOFMANJO&U=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=318&pmid=24476>
 from
1992 to 2001 in
ABI/INFORM<http://ck5zj6hy9n.search.serialssolutions.com/log?L=CK5ZJ6HY9N&D=CAB&&J=ACADOFMANJO&U=http://firstsearch.oclc.org/dbname=ABI_INFORM;FSIP>

I just want the damn article!

I realize that this conversation has little to do with small colleges and
public libraries, and I appreciate the *smack* I recieved for dragging the
public good schtick into the debate when it wasn't appropriate. I also
appreciate some of the good links and examples of these practices being put
into place.



[1] http://www.alexa.com/



-- 
Mark R. Costa, MLS

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man."
--- George Bernard Shaw