What I dislike here is your assumption that you know better than your
users what's "good" for them/what they want/what they OUGHT to want/what
they need/etc. Providing them with available information in a reasonably
accessible way, and then trusting them -- whether they're undergrads,
grad students, lecturers, profs, researchers, community users, etc -- to
make their own decisions about what to do with that based upon their
particular, individual, and personal circumstances, locations, contexts,
etc., isn't "abnegating" your responsibility -- it IS your responsibility.
Larry Campbell
UBC Library
Tim Spalding wrote:
Most of our users will start out in an electronic environment whether we like
it or not
(most of us on THIS list like it)---and will decide, based on what they
find there, on their own, without us making the decision for
them---whether to obtain (or attempt to obtain) a copy of the physical
book or not. Whether we like it or not.
But if you think the options are between US deciding whether the user should
consult a physical book or not---then we're not even playing the same game.
What I dislike here is your abnegation of the responsibility to care
about the choices students make. If you're not considering the value
of all resources—including the book—you're not playing the library
game, the educator game or the Google game. You're just throwing stuff
on screens because you can.
"Whether you like it or not" you're pointing students in some
directions and not others. You're giving these resources different
amounts of emphasis in your UI. You're including some and not
others—the others includes all other web pages and all other offline
resources. You aren't making choices for the user, but you're not
stepping back and washing your hands of the responsibility to help the
student.
In a physical-book context, the book is one of the resources. It
deserves to weighted and evaluated within this larger set of choices.
It's your responsibility to consider it within the mix of options. If
the book is excellent and the online resources poor, helping the user
means communicating this. So, sometimes the OPAC should basically say
"there's nothing good online about this book; but it's on the shelf
right over there."
*Certainly in Classics that's still true—the online world is a very
impoverished window into the discipline.
