Marshall
Breeding writes in 2005 that libraries and “the industry marketing marquees
[were tending] to give top billing to link resolvers, metasearch interfaces,
and electronic resource management”. He did believe that these new interfaces
were a great benefit for libraries, but he was worried they would in fact “fall
short” of library needs. He makes a very good argument that all the different
programs are needed in order for the library to keep up with user needs and
unfortunately these programs are not interoperable. Making the library website
non-user friendly, which of course is the ultimate goal.
Fast-forward
five (five) years, Sai Deng conducts a study with the Wichita State University
Libraries. Wichita State is trying to increase user operability on their
website. They use local author search as their project model. Immediately I
observe that five years after Breeding observed that there needed to be a
single system and the current systems Innovative, Sirsi, Horizon, and Voyager
all together is too confusing and not efficient for libraries. Fiver years
after his article was published Deng is commenting on the same issue.
Deng
doesn’t raise new problems. Both talk about interoperability, the library needs
to buy different programs. And a single program option is too expensive for
most libraries. One progress is made that is worth talking about and that is
appealing to the user. Deng mentions the Wichita University library adds
pictures to their search, which helps the user identify what they’re looking
for. It will prevent them from “losing attention […] to the ever-popular
nonlibrary interfaces such as Amazon.com and Google” as Breeding puts it. Which
is still an increasing fear among libraries.
My
conclusion? Something is not addressed and maybe it is a good research topic,
why are we still facing these same problems? Is it just financial problems?
What systems exist that can help libraries create a user friendly, efficient
online public access catalog?
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