[741] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Next generation OPAC
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Millard Johnson)
Tue Jul 14 14:53:06 1992
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1992 13:41:45 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: Millard Johnson <johnsonm@ohsu.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
An observation about searching for items in an alphabetic
list:
One of the things that the card catalog still does better
than most OPACs is let the user narrow in on a target in
an alphabetical file. You start any place, you look at a
few records and then jump closer to the target. Then
when you get really close, you browse forward or
backward scanning cards. (There is more to it than this --
but anyone could do it.) Most good OPACs give the user
some feed back on failed attempts, but they usually start
out with some kind of pass/fail typing test. The point is,
there is plenty of room for improvement in finding items in
an alphabetical list.
In the early 70's I conducted a little lab exercise. We
hooked a joy stick up to a terminal that had a long
alphabetical list. The user pushed the stick up to go A-to-
Z, and down to go from Z-to-A. If you pushed the stick
just a little, you scrolled one item at a time. If you pushed
the stick to the extreme position, you scrolled every 500th
record. The modern equivalent would be a slider bar and
a mouse (or something like that). It would be an
alphabetic throttle. It would be useful in finding and
browsing alphabetic lists.
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I would rather risk failure than achieve it without risk.
Millard Johnson, PORTALS
johnsonm@ohsu.edu
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