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Actually, I don't think this is ideal for a lot of people who prefer browsing to searching. The whole premise that you have to come up with a query in the first place is the showstopper for some folks. There are browsers and there are searchers. If your system starts with a search box, the browse-oriented will put in a highly generic term like History. Faceted search can help them from there, as could LCSH lists for that matter. But if these same browse-oriented users constantly go to the library and head straight for QA76.9 H85, well then, that's the closest they really have to a "search" term. Shelf browsing interfaces, as well as browseable image libraries organized by collection, make sense to me for this reason. I would always like to see a search box available for the search-oriented, but to me, one of the failings of the OPAC today is the absence of support for the browse-oriented. Genny Engel Sonoma County Library [log in to unmask] 707 545-0831 x581 www.sonomalibrary.org >>> [log in to unmask] 10/01/08 05:21AM >>> Ideally, the user should be able to run a query, retrieve a set of items, sort them however he wants (by author, date, call number, some kind of dynamic clustering algorithm, whatever), and be able to methodically browse from one end of that sort order to the other without any fear of missing something. Keith On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Stephens, Owen <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I think we need to understand the > way people use browse to navigate resources if we are to successfully bring > the concept of collection browsing to our navigation tools. David suggests > that we should think of a shelf browse as a type of 'show me more like this' > which is definitely one reason to browse - but is it the only reason?