Bernard said on RDA-L:
>For "they" are mostly not after specific documents but after facts
>,,,
That depends on who "they" are. A university catalogue use study I
did decades ago found that freshmen/women primarily sought topical
information, but graduate students primarily sought known items (from
reading lists, reviews, faculty mentions). There was a gradual shift
from freshman/woman to graduate student through the five or six years.
I have never done a use study of a public library's catalogue, but I
know that my wife is most often seeking the latest PD James ("Adam is
back" she just discovered), or the DVD of a movie for which she has
seen a "Globe and Mail" review, such as "Young At Heart" (a
documentary about a senior choir).
For the freshman/woman topic searcher, keyword search is a great new
boon. But for the known item searcher, exact transcription of 245
title remains vital, along with 246s with numbers spelled out or as
numerals, and other likely to be searched variations, as well as
author.
Whatever else we have or don't have, I want the 245/246 (or their new
fangled next generation equivalents) in manifestation records, and I
want to be able to search them whether the "'Net" is up or down,
assuming that I have electricity via the grid or my newly installed
generator (we were seven days without electricity winter before last).
The brave new bibliographic world as described by James and Bernard
assumes services not universally available. Depending on the upcoming
US elections, perhaps even American libraries should not be too
certain of the stability of their present services.
While SLC does do some OPAC hosting, we don't push the service. There
is something to be said for the library's catalogue being self
contained and inhouse.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
