Quoting Benjamin A Abrahamse <babra...@mit.edu>:
I want to thank Benjamin for keeping an open mind about Open Library,
in spite of its variance from "real library" practice. In my mind it
isn't useful to try to determine whether Open Library is right or
wrong, but to observe a different and interesting approach to a large
body of bibliographic data. This could help us challenge some of our
own assumptions, many of which are so long-held that to us in the
library world they are as natural as the air we breath. To whit...
Alphabetical indexing remains, I believe, the best way of showing
users what a library does (and just as importantly) does not "have"
(or license as the case may be). It may very well be that this
function is not particularly useful for applications like Open
Library which are closer in purpose, IMO, to universal
bibliographies than true library catalogs. (This should not be
taken as a dig at Open Library, which I support, but simply as a
characterization of its function compared to most online catalogs.)
For what it's worth our "A to Z index" of online journals is one of
the most popular features we offer our users, because it allows
them to see, quickly and easily, what resources are available to
them through our library.
Alphabetical order is in the general category of "known orders." That
is, if you are seeking a particular place in a large body of
"whatever" it helps if that body is in a known order. 1,2,3...
a,b,c... are common ones that are widely shared. But both of those
require that the seeker have very precise knowledge of what is being
sought, and exactly how it is named in the body. A biologist may be
very comfortable finding honey bees in this list:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Subclass: Pterygota
Infraclass: Neoptera
Superorder: Endopterygota
Order: Hymenoptera
Suborder: Apocrita
Family: Apidae
Subfamily: Apinae
Tribe: Apini
Genus: Apis
While a "civilian" would be more successful with:
Honey
Honey ants
Honey bees
Both are known orders, to the respective "knower."
But why would someone looking for "Honey bees" be in an alphabetical
list to begin with? If we match the need with the best tools to
satisfy the need, I contend that the situations in which an
alphabetical list is useful are few. Which doesn't mean that one
should never have an alphabetical order option, but that it should be
presented only when that is the best way to navigate to ones answer.
That users doing, say, a search on Honey bees are served by a returned
list of books ordered alphabetically by author is of course
questionable.
That library catalogs have relied (in the past) so heavily on
alphabetical order is some indication that we have expected (or hoped)
that our users would approach the library with something quite
specific in mind -- so specific that a "known order" would be useful.
There is also the assumption that seeking is very linguistic -- that
users come to the catalog with words. That is undoubtedly true for
some library users, those who come to the catalog looking for a
particular author or title (although you could argue that searching,
rather than browsing, satisfies that type of query).
Rather than promoting alphabetical order over any other order, for
example, order by circulation figures, it would be good to actually
analyze the user's situation:
- what knowledge does the user bring with him when beginning a search?
- what is the user's expectation about the retrieval? Is he expecting
a single item? Is he hoping for a large set?
- how much time and energy is the user willing to put in to find the
"right book"?
- how will the user recognize the "right book" from the catalog entry?
In FRBR we have the four user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain.
These are fully imbued with the assumption of user knowledge.
"to find entities that correspond to the user's stated search criteria
(i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file
or database as the result of a search using an attribute or
relationship of the entity);"
This seems to eliminate the possibility that the user could be
successful in the library catalog with a need like: "I just finished
Twilight and loved it. What else might I like?" Yet that is a
legitimate query to bring to the library, and even to the library
catalog. Perhaps we should spend some time re-writing the FRBR user
tasks, expanding them to meet a wider variety of user needs. Then we
could look at our catalogs and say: "What does this mean in terms of
catalog functionality?" I maintain that alphabetical order will not be
at the top of our list, but will probably appear along some user tasks.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
