Kevin M. Randall wrote:
Those tasks are universal, have been so since the beginning of time,
Well, that's saying a lot, and I just have to disagree. Although these
four tasks are the tasks that *library catalogs* respond to, they are
not the only (and often not the primary) tasks of information seeking.
There is a lot of information seeking that does not make use of a search
-- like every time you open a newspaper and look at the headlines.
"Find" essentially eliminates the entire browse and serendipity activity
that we all know is very important. ("Hey, Fred, have you read that new
book by X? It's great!")
And there's a lot that one might want to do with information beyond
"obtain" -- I think it's a great fault that libraries end their
responsibility to the user at the "obtain" point. We need to facilitate
"use", not just "obtain."
To me, the FRBR tasks read like a narrow description of a person going
to a library catalog for a particular item -- whether that be by author,
title or subject. I contend (and I think that the OCLC study on user
attitudes toward the library shows) that this is an increasingly minor
activity on the part of information users, and libraries are becoming
less and less relevant because we cling to this view.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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