Catalogs are the problem!
Librarians are the problem!
Students are the problem!
A new Chronicle article on trends in library catalog software has touched off an online reader debate about who’s to blame for patrons’ search frustrations and how to fix the situation. The article discussed how libraries are trying to out-Google Google with easy-to-use, online catalog-search software, while “pockets of resistance” in library circles feel the new products dumb down the research process.
That resistance was on display in reader gripes like this:
“Unfortunately, instead of teaching students how to conduct a precise search with few relevant results, faculty and librarians have found an easy way out — googlize everything.”
Argued another:
“Today it seems that just because our students come in knowing how to perform a Google search that that is all they need. Library databases are ‘tools.’ Knowing how to use a tool properly must be taught.”
But other readers rose in defense of users. Sort of:
“Much as I am also irritated by users who don’t know a keyword from a hole in the ground, the tendency to blame the user for not knowing how to use a catalog is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this mess to start with. Yes, users are idiots. But good systems are designed for idiots and help idiots be successful despite their idiocy. That’s why Google is so popular, and why catalogs are not. Any tool that requires ‘instruction’ to use is doomed.”
Others pointed to the logistical problems of teaching better catalog use:
“Commenters who claim that students need to be taught the correct way to use existing catalogs need to come up with a comprehensive way to teach every student at a university this information. Librarians don’t often have access to a wide swath of students for instructional purposes; at many institutions, they are dependent on teaching faculty and instructors to want to integrate library instruction. More user-friendly catalogs seem much more realistic at this point.”
And here’s a blame-the-librarians take:
“Fact of the matter is students don’t know how to use the catalog, library instruction is limited and frankly usually offered by people who are terrified of Google and Web 2.0. You don’t need to revamp the library catalog and interface, you need to revamp the librarians and how they are taught.”
Susan L. Gibbons, vice provost and dean of the River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester, summed up the discussion in an e-mail to The Chronicle:
“The commentary shows the all-too-common divide within libraries about information literacy. Some pine for the good old days when students had no choice but to come to the physical library and be forced to learn the idiosyncrasies of mastering a research tool, such as journal indices and the power of Library of Congress subject headings. Personally, I think libraries have gone from being in a monopolistic to a competitive marketplace for information; and that marketplace shift requires different thinking about services. I am of the opinion that libraries should do everything they can to lower the barrier of entry. Nothing should stand in the way of a student entering some search terms and discovering good resources. Once the student has entered into the (virtually or physically) library, then the rich complexities can be revealed.”
17 Responses to The Library-Catalog Wars: ‘Chronicle’ Readers Weigh In
ebarney - October 1, 2009 at 3:42 pm
The problem is losing sight of the purpose – finding the information quickly and accurately. Blame games and pointing fingers lose track of that goal instantly.Librarians create a lot of really helpful data for catalogs. All of the great faceted searches that were described in the original article, that make it possible to narrow a search by author or subject or date range (like narrowing from shoes to pumps to red pumps on Target) would be impossible without that great data.Sure users are impatient. But they also will stick to what works – if you make an interface that helps the user, usually it will also make the librarians really happy too.Knowing that you can do an advanced search and get a list of subjects and then add a filter is working around the tool – interfaces that work with us don’t require so many steps. But if you can’t get an interface that really works, sure, teach the workaround. Information literacy will be useful in more than just searching the catalog, since it’s likely users will encounter more advanced searches than google at other times in their lives.But talking about faceted browsing is not talking about Googlizing anything. It’s more of an Amazon approach, if anything.
bobpaver - October 1, 2009 at 3:48 pm
One solution would be to have instructional versions of library catalog software that would show the user how to refine his/her search, use targeted keywords, and generally how to navigate the catalog web site.Unfortunately, some cataloging systems, as delivered out of the box are incredibly awful. The software developers need to read a few books on web usability and jump into the 21st century.
jwebbwsu - October 1, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I think it is a myth that libraries were ever a monopoly in the information world. For students, they may have had a partial monopoly, and for faculty, for the resources those faculty knew where the library hid them. People used public libraries for pleasure, but a large number of people, asking a friend or colleague was the preferred information retrieval system. If that led them to a library to get THE book or article, browsing may have then serendipitously led them to other sources. Too much of the library catalog was designed as the operating system for the librarians, and it still shows. Of course I exaggerate to attempt to make a point.
pchinn - October 1, 2009 at 4:52 pm
As the article and comments point out, training everyone who uses catalogs and search engines is an impossible task. Instead, how about we begin demanding that the companies who create the software put resources in to designing interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use?There’s a reason Google is popular: you don’t need training to find something using it.
bsparris - October 1, 2009 at 4:58 pm
The question is whether the user needs something specific or if anything will do. So often students come into the library wanting a specific book or something by a specific author. They are unsuccessful using a keyword search. I show them how to browse the title or author, and there’s instant success! As well as being a reference librarian, I’m a cataloger, and I love seeing a catalog work well, including the Library of Congress Subject Headings and the authority work I’ve entered. Yes, keyword searching can be valuable, as when one needs to search within the contents of a book (which uses the 505 contents note field of a MARC record if one has been supplied), but if we can’t find THE exact title or author someone needs, or the exact subject (with the help of authority control’s see and see also references), is our catalog really performing it’s purpose? Wasn’t that the original purpose, and doesn’t it still remain one of the most important purposes of the catalog?
jxmiller - October 1, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I am delighted to see Chronicle readers exercised about informaation retrieval tools in libraries. As the original article points out we are the cusp of a major transformation in these tools akin to the automation of card catalogs in the 1970′s and 1980′s and the creation of standardized card catalogs in the late 19th century. It is important that library users, not just librarians, be involved in this transformation.I do want to make one point about the phrase “information literacy.” In this discussion it seems to be defined as instruction on how to use libary information retrieval tools (catalogs etc.) While it certainly includes such how to instruction it is far more than that. The ACRL information literacy standards (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/infolit/standards/standardstoolkit.cfm)include five elements: recognizing an information need, accessing information effectively and efficiently, evaluating information effectively, and using information effectively, and finally using information ethically and legally. Even with the most intuitive tools in the world most of those skills will still be relevant to any educated person in our knowledge economy and need to be taught and practiced from kindergarden through graduate school.
lmcerruti - October 1, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Maybe libraries shouldn’t be so focused on search. All that valuable information in the catalog provides a rich context for research materials, linking one resource to another. So what if Google starts the researcher on the path? Can’t the information in the library catalog then show users the branches that they can take from there?
samueloulrey - October 1, 2009 at 5:54 pm
This whole discussion is odd. I’ve hardly ever had problems finding things via the library catalogs (paper or electronic), though sometimes it took me a couple tries, and there were times when the items were in the processing pipe-line instead of on the shelves. A simple Boolean search, and conscientiously extensive cross-indexing should suffice. Still, I’d make it a point to know a few librarians, just in case.In ye olden days, under-grads didn’t have access to the “stacks”, but had to beg at the desk, or get a note from a prof saying that they were acting as his agent or some such. But then in the olden days you had to do the same at stores, bring a list to the clerk and he’d find them in storage and bring them up to the counter, but now we browse.
11131546 - October 1, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Don’t blame the catalog and don’t blame the users when users can’t find what the library does not have.Library collections, as a percent of total higher ed or academic R&D spending, has to be at an all time low.
jwebbwsu - October 1, 2009 at 7:10 pm
pchinn & bobpaver: library vendors HAVE designed the systems that librarians demanded they wanted. One may argue that they asked the wrong librarians, but having been in numerous focus groups and alpha and beta tests, we librarians largely did get what we wanted. We have, however, learned how to do pretty good usability testing & are therefore getting better at providing feedback. The vendors also feel “threatened” by open source and new vendors offering faceted searching, and the vendors are getting better. And with Google, users DO need some sort of assistance often in interpreting the relative value of sources.
11186108 - October 1, 2009 at 9:53 pm
bsparris makes an important point, “The question is whether the user needs something specific or if anything will do.” The latter need is what makes web search engines so broadly used.In academic work, the former need is often required. That’s when Boolean searches, and other filters, become so important. People need to be aware that this can be done with the common Advanced Search or, usually, with symbols such as “+-& People also need to be aware of when each is needed.
davidnoe - October 2, 2009 at 10:14 am
What kind of search did Ms. Bauer perform? The #6 hit in a general keyword search of Virgo for Thomas Jefferson (“Single crystal-large grain niobium technology: International Niobium Workshop, Araxá, Brazil, 30 October-1 November 2006″) likely would have been of great interest to the third President of the United States. I am curious if he would have been satisfied with Google like results in his research. Regarding “Meager Fruits of an Ongoing Fight With Virgo,” did Ms. Bauer ask a librarian for help? I think “Ongoing Fight” might be a bit of an exaggeration. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (U.S.) is indeed a corporate author added entry for the physics conference papers. Is it less relevant? Is that enough to make a graduate student of history at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, give up?The search interface is not the problem: the lowering of our expectations for quality research is what we need to reevaluate.
costello - October 2, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I don’t agree that Ms. Gibbons’s email sums up the discussion following the previous article.At least half the comments on that article were by intelligent, thoughtful librarians and patrons explaining why a structured catalog is helpful to researchers and advocating that students be taught to use it. Ms. Gibbons’s comments seem to characterize those posters as reactionary troglodytes and backward control freaks cowarding in fear of “competition” from the “marketplace” and apparently opposed to “lower[ing] the barrier of entry” to the library.It seems to me that Ms. Gibbons’s email merely states her own views. It doesn’t summarize both sides, because it mischaracterizes the arguments on the side she clearly opposes.
abcrs - October 2, 2009 at 2:04 pm
This is such bad journalism – if you do what they say in the catalog you get books on the man (using either last name and first name) http://www.lib.virginia.edu/ .Does anyone bother with a basic fact check?
nuthouseusa - October 2, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I know not who all of you are, or how many (some, at least) are librarians like me. However, I do know that the knowing/not knowing issues are all part of the quest for information literacy — it’s jargon, yes, forgive me. Just yesterday, President Obama proclaimed October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month. I kid you not. Details at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Proclamation-National-Information-Literacy-Awareness-Month/
catmando - October 3, 2009 at 11:18 am
Oh, for heavens sake. No one gets anything without effort. Not students, faculty, or librarians. Go back to the big red books (the LC Subject Heads) and the card catalog–they worked. But OH NO, we had top support industry ahnd the stock market and get fatter in our chairs! How well I remember Pittsburgh (at least I remember it as Pittsburg) giving out card catalog sets attached to baloons and sailing them out the window.The world gets what (or better than) it deserves, and I say, good riddance.
lcbane - October 4, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I did an author search for jefferson, thomas (author) in Virgo (2300+ titles). Yes, the crazy conference article was top of the list, but when I looked at the record for one of the books obviously by Thomas Jefferson and clicked on the authority link, I found that UV Library has 1,569 books by Thomas Jefferson. If I used the subject headings to the right to narrow it, I found only 20 books on doctrinal theology by Thomas Jefferson. If I’d done a keyword search for thomas jefferson, I would have found 6583 titles.I would cheerfully accept blame for making it “too hard” for students to find what they want if it were all my fault as a librarian, but it isn’t.I am given 50 minutes for a tour in University 101 and 50-75 minutes for research instruction in English 102. Occasionally another class might ask for a session, but that’s it.In the tour, I don’t teach tool use because it’s not relevant to the tour and it won’t be rememebered when needed — except as an excuse to get out of attending the English 102 session.In English 102, I talk about search strategies and why we need to look at more than the web and how to evaluate what we find and how to cite and how to use the tools, but there is little time for teaching subject searching or Boolean logic or other expert tips. It used to be when I had one major online database, I could, but now I have so many possible databases that all retreive different things that I can’t. AND NOW I am ALSO expected to make it interactive to keep them awake and attentive. How can I keep 20 students with 20 different topics and 20 different computer skill levels on track and still get all my points across in 50-75 minutes? Let me know if you can and how you do it. I’d appreciate the help and the advice.What I want to know is what’s going on in the elementary schools and middle schools and high schools? I have students come in to get books and they have no idea how to locate one or even where to start. I see them wandering in the stacks and ask if I can help. Did they never use books in reports in high school? Did they never use their school library? Their public library?What’s with faculty assigning research projects but never talking to me about them or sending me a copy of the assignment? Every semester I send out a request for copies of any assignment requiring research/library resources. I explain that if I know about the assignment ahead of time, I can give the “early bird” student the same quality help that I give the procrastinating student who comes in the night before. I rarely get a reply.There are far too many assumptions made out there about what the students know, how they search, and what they need.Example one: Last Christmas I watched my 15-year-old cousin answer an extra credit online question for her high school govt. class. She googled the terms. Ran down the results lists, picked #4, and copied and pasted the link to her teacher. When I asked why she hadn’t actually looked at the web page and verified it was trustworthy, she replied she could send her teacher ten answers and it would be okay. What kind of teacher allows ten attempts at getting the answer correct? What kind of hit or miss attitude does this create? This is a bright kid in a “gifted” high school.Example two:This semester my boss was trying to assign jobs to work-study students in the library. She asked them if they were computer literate and good with computers. Those who answered yes were then asked: Are you familiar with Word, Excel, ….? (We know we have to train them with the catalog and OCLC, but if they are good with Word or Excel, they won’t have too many problems with library programs.) It turns out they weren’t. When asked what they were good with, they answered Facebook and the web.The students have an overinflated sense of skill, the professors don’t really know what the library has or how to use it, and librarians are trying hard to work with both groups who are working with incorrect assumptions.Sometimes I feel like a NASCAR driver trying to teach driver’s ed. I know the stuff, but they think I’m just a good ole driver’s ed teacher who doesn’t know much more than they do.