How do we measure "what we are already doing well?" It's one of the
questions that is coming up in the LC work on the Future of
Bibliographic Control. I had hoped to find some answers in user studies,
and even got a copy of:
Donald O. Case. Looking for Information: A survey of research on
information seeking, needs, and behavior. 2nd edition.
This is mainly about studies of how people seek information (not how
they use library catalogs, and I was hoping for more of that latter).
There are some interesting conclusions, however, such as one analysis
that identifies these behaviors:
starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, extracting
(p. 260)
Then someone adding these on to that list:
accessing, networking, verifying, information managing (p.261)
Someone else came up with this:
identifying, locating or accessing, consulting or reading (p. 263)
In other words, when research is done, there are a variety of models
that arise for information seeking. There's nothing to say that they are
more legitimate than the FRBR tasks, but that really begs the question,
which is: what is our unit of measure? And where is our evidence?
What I do like about this survey is that it is about information seeking
and not just catalog use, although I would like to see a good discussion
of how the two intersect. In any case, I do recommend the introductory
chapters of this book as a review of theory -- kind of a refresher course.
kc
Jay Smith wrote:
I would say two things.
One is that, as regards the Statement of Responsibility, its direct use
to the libary user is unclear in most cases; rather, it is needed by a
cataloger to help make distinctions among similar authors and aimilar
titles, so that library users can find what they want and FIND LIKE
THINGS TOGETHER.
Another is that we cannot possibly satisfy all users' information needs.
We may be able to identify means of satisfying MORE of them, or we may
in fact find that with the needs clearly stated we ALREADY DO go some
way toward satisfying them. But we should not abandon what we are
already doing well because some intriguing slide presentation seduces us
into thinking we should offer the entire universe.
Jay Towne Smith
Senior Cataloger
San Francisco Public Library
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 1:40 PM
To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Application profiles and RDA
J. McRee Elrod wrote:
Karen Coyle said:
We have to look at WHY we do things, not just how we do them.
Truer words have perhaps never been written.
We have to remember *why* patrons need statement of responsibility as
on the item. why patrons need place of publication, why the
distinction between topical subject and genre is important*,
Actually, I think we have to go back further than that. Before we make
the leap to "statement of responsibility" (which is a particular data
element) we need to ask:
- what are users trying to do?
- what is the best way to help them do it?
etc.
The FRBR user tasks are one way of approaching this. Another way would
be Cutter's questions:
1. does the library have a book by this author?
2. does the library have a book by this title?
etc.
But I think that both of these are already stated too narrowly because
they assume the user has come to the library to look for something
specific, and there's much more to information seeking than that.
There's a wonderful graphic that I found in a presentation that Lorcan
Dempsey did that shows a much broader view of users and information.
It's slide 5 of this presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/lisld/moving-to-the-network-leveldiscovery-and
-disclosure/5
I use this to show people that our users need more than just to discover
something in our catalogs, and that we are doing ourselves a disservice
when we define our role so narrowly. If you look at that diagram, there
is really only one, perhaps two, information use behaviors (out of 21)
that libraries claim to wish to satisfy. By looking at this big picture
we can seek ways to provide library services that fit into a much
broader set of user activities.
Then, if we can show when and where users need a statement of
responsibility, we can provide it at that point and in that context.
kc
--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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