Dear librarian friends
Nov. 13th, 2007 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtaoBecause I have so many of you, and what are you for if not to abuse shamelessly with question about libraries?
When I use my library's online catalog, which I do at a frequency ranging between daily and hourly, I am presented with four search methods: keywords, authors, subjects, and titles. I nearly always use authors or titles, and I am generally happy with the results. I understand keyword searching.
Why does the concept of a subject search still exist? It can't help but present you with useless statistics, such as "there are 14,577 books in the library about the Civil War" followed by the first twenty books written by Arthur Aardvark about that subject. If it led to some sort of taxonomy or shelving system it might at least be excusable for helping the novice librarian point a patron to the right part of the building... but it doesn't.
Shouldn't this be replaced by DMOZ or the original Yahoo! directory or something similar? What am I failing to get?
When I use my library's online catalog, which I do at a frequency ranging between daily and hourly, I am presented with four search methods: keywords, authors, subjects, and titles. I nearly always use authors or titles, and I am generally happy with the results. I understand keyword searching.
Why does the concept of a subject search still exist? It can't help but present you with useless statistics, such as "there are 14,577 books in the library about the Civil War" followed by the first twenty books written by Arthur Aardvark about that subject. If it led to some sort of taxonomy or shelving system it might at least be excusable for helping the novice librarian point a patron to the right part of the building... but it doesn't.
Shouldn't this be replaced by DMOZ or the original Yahoo! directory or something similar? What am I failing to get?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-14 08:24 pm (UTC)Perhaps full text indexing such as is being attempted by Google will make for better searching in the future, but it will take a long time since most libraries have material that will never be included into Google or anyone else's similar effort.
There was a similar issue when card catalogs were eliminated. Some libraries still retain cards for older material because the cost of computerizing them was prohibitive. The rate at which material is consulted drops off rapidly. Things more than a few years old are hardly ever consulted except for classics and those doing scholarly research.
Even if full text indexing will become the norm in the future there still needs to be some breakthroughs on retrieval logic. Google and its competitors still use very elementary systems to determine relevance. It's not clear whether they keep their algorithms secret because of competitive fears or embarrassment.