[Web4lib] Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

[Larry Campbell]

My take: an interesting report, but with a couple of significant 
disappointments:

a) It would have been nice if they could have expanded their vision 
beyond "the catalog", or at least have made an effort to define what 
they mean by "the catalog" (e.g., simply a discovery interface, and/or a 
database/index as well? If the latter, what kind of database, and how 
defined? The database of all library "holdings"? [And then what does 
"holdings" mean? Articles? Online gov. docs.? Open-access journals? 
Wikis/blogs?, etc., etc.]).

b) It would have been nice if they could have looked deeper into "what 
users and librarians want" than merely variations in "data quality" -- 
e.g., what do each want from different *kinds* of information resources, 
such as digitized items, physical items, online items, aggregations of 
items, locally-produced/published items, learning-object items, etc., etc.

Larry Campbell
University of BC Library

B.G. Sloan wrote:

>Just wondering what others might think of this OCLC report:
>
>Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want:
>
>Main web page:
>http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/default.htm
>
>Executive Summary:
>http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/summary.htm
>
>Full report:
>http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/fullreport.pdf
>
>Bernie Sloan
>Sora Associates
>Bloomington, IN
>
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