Robin Mize wrote:
I agree that we need to provide a seamless interface for the user,
because the user doesn't want a lot of roadblocks on their path to
information.
Myers, John F. wrote:
The issue is that we hide our catalog records in our catalogs. While
the public face of those catalogs is a WebOPAC, this is only an html
based interface to the catalog data, an interface that is inherently
self contained. The actual records are not searchable via a search
originating on the open web. That is, I can't google or yahoo "Gone
with the Wind" along with my locale to discover that my local library
has a copy of the book or the movie available.
I just did a Google Books search on "Gone with the wind." I clicked on
the first hit, and was given a brief bibliographic display and a link at
the right to "Find this book in a library." I clicked that and was taken
to WorldCat, which provided a list of copies in libraries close to me. I
clicked the first one, and was taken to my own university's catalog. At
that point I would need to do the title search again, but for some of
the local catalogs in the WorldCat list, a link directly to the book's
record in the catalog was provided from the WorldCat interface.
This isn't exactly seamless, but seamless is problematic as an ideal.
All along the path described above, I was making choices which the
interoperating systems were presenting in a convenient order. I don't
consider these kinds of decision points to be obstructions, and I don't
expect systems to divine all my choices at the outset. And I don't fault
Google for wanting to interoperate with WorldCat rather than with each
of the gaggle of local library systems. Actually, this seems like a
pretty successful example of intersystem navigation from searching the
open web to getting a book from a nearby library.
Stephen
--
Stephen Hearn
Authority Control Coordinator/Head, Database Management Section
Technical Services, University Libraries, University of Minnesota
160 Wilson Library
309 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Ph: 612-625-2328 / Fax: 612-625-3428
