[13010] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
catalog searching
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Miriam Bobkoff)
Wed Jul 7 20:23:11 1999
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 13:00:55 -0600
From: Miriam Bobkoff <mbobkoff@rt66.com>
In-Reply-To: <0FE700MJ3L23JC@Post-Office.UH.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.4.10.9907021056450.5166-100000@shell.rt66.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> From: "Mary Pagliero Popp <popp@indiana.edu>
> think there are many issues that are useful for discussion...
> [snip] ...there are also practical issues, including design of library
> catalogs so that real users can find information in them
Thank you, Mary Popp, for proposing this topic. I posted a version of this
question to the users' group of our catalog system (Innovative Interfaces'
Innopac), but I don't think that's exactly the right forum.
A few months ago on another list (not a librarians' list), one of the
users--one of those Publics we want to create Access for--posted
this telling message (quoted with permission):
"... if I have one letter wrong in an unusual name, I can't find it
through [her local library's catalog]. However, if I try to find the same
author on Amazon's site, it offers me the correct name, only spelled
right... Fell into a similar trap using Meg Chittenden's nickname instead
of Margaret. [catalog name] wouldn't give me the time of day, but Amazon
did... Many people on the list seriously object to amazon.com. Well, I
think it's a miracle that you can kind of know what you are looking for
and they can find it for you. It's like talking to a real librarian."
So there I was in a Hastings book store the other day, looking at their
touch-screen machine thingy--it's so silly, they make the letters look
like oldfashioned typewriter keys, and every time you touch one it makes a
perfect rattly noise; the faster you touch the more it sounds like a 1930s
newspaper movie--for a mystery called _Shakespeare's Christmas_. Except I
typed it "shakesoeares christmas". Rather than correct it, I thought to
myself, hmmm, a person would know what I'm after; the Innopac absolutely
wouldn't; let's see what this machine does. And sure enough despite a
wrong letter in the middle of the word it offered me three titles with the
words Shakespeare (spelled correctly) and Christmas, including the one I
wanted.
Our library's catalog (Innopac) would simply place me in the alphabetical
title list with a "Your entry would be here", many many screens above the
title I actually wanted.
I don't read the no-hit logs much anymore, it's way too depressing.
Patrons don't do very well, and in a lot of the failed searches it's plain
to the human eye what the patron really wanted. This suggests solutions
that only vendors' programmers could do anything about. If they would.
Which I don't think they're thinking about.
Are there ANY library catalog systems out there that behave like "real
librarians"? That are as smart as amazon.com, or Hastings' machine which
plays at pretending it's not even a computer system, at guessing what
people need? Any non-experimental catalogs which spell-check, or soundex,
or offer reasonable guesses and near-matches when a search gets no direct
hits?
Do we know of any major vendors that are thinking about it? Shouldn't a
catalog search feel more "like talking to a real librarian"?
Miriam Bobkoff personal: mbobkoff@rt66.com
Santa Fe Public Library work: mbobkoff@ci.santa-fe.nm.us
[ Santa Fe Poetry Broadside ]
[ http://www.rt66.com/~sfpoetry/ ]
[ Now featuring Issue #10, June 1999 ]
