Jim Weinheimer wrote:
This is really the point: relatively few people start their research with a library catalog. In fact, I was surprised when OCLC discovered that an entire 1%-11% does today! If people are not using library catalogs to start with, it logically follows that the #1 search choice for people is full-text.
But do we know what people did before the advent of internet search technologies? Did everybody at once rush to a library catalog? Or are those that do, in absolute numbers, even more numerous today than 15 years ago? I guess the phone was used a lot more to gain information, for one thing, and whatever reference books people had at home. And if they went to a library, didn't most of them make a beeline for the shelves and went browsing before they turned to reference and then, finally, to the card catalog? I'm afraid we have no figures. Our reading rooms are fuller than they were 15 years ago and book checkouts have not dropped. The use of catalogs from outside, and then placing reserves from home or office (the "obtain" function), is something that didn't exist 15 years ago. But how many searches there are that might benefit from FRBR is unknown. B.Eversberg
