I agree that showing the user evaluative resources that are not any good
is not a service to the user. When there are no good evaluative
resources available, we should not show bad ones to the user.

In either case though, with or without evaluative resources, we tell the
user where the book is located on the shelves.

[And in most library contexts I am familiar with, that is NOT accurately
descirbed as "right over there". Perhaps you are familiar with other
sorts of libraries then I. In a large urban public library system or
just about ANY academic library, this is just as likely to be: "in the
library, but you are sitting at home right now, which could be a mile
away or could be two states away", "in another building [which may be
miles away]", "checked out to a user, but you can recall it if you
like", "in this building three floors and 200 meters away", or "not in
our system at all right now but you can ILL it."  So I'm having problems
with your continued assertions that the book is "right over there" for a
user consulting the OPAC.  Not neccesarily in a majority of the cases
for my users, or the users of most other libraries I am familiar with.]

I certainly agree that making it easier to find a book on the shelves is
another enhancement we should be looking at. I think it was David Walker
who had a nice OPAC feature that actually gave you a map, with hilighted
path, from your computer terminal (if you were sitting in the library,
which again is probably a _minority_ of our opac use), to the book on
the shelves. That's awfully cool.

And in either case, with or without extra evaluative metadata, with or
without an interactive map showing you were the book is---in the end
it's the user's choice of whether to obtain the book or not. Our job is,
indeed, giving them good and useful and accurate evaluative information
to aid in this selection process. If you suggest that Google metadata is
NOT good and useful and accurate metadata, that's legitimate.  But you
started out, to my reading, suggesting that Table of Contents, reviews,
and links to other editions could not possibly be useful, and I still
take exception to that.

Jonathan

Tim Spalding wrote:
>> Most of our users will start out in an electronic environment whether we like it or not
>> (most of us on THIS list like it)---and will decide,  based on what they
>> find there, on their own, without us making the decision for
>> them---whether to obtain (or attempt to obtain) a copy of the physical
>> book or not. Whether we like it or not.
>>
>
>
>> But if you think the options are between US deciding whether the user should consult a physical book or not---then we're not even playing the same game.
>>
>
> What I dislike here is your abnegation of the responsibility to care
> about the choices students make. If you're not considering the value
> of all resources—including the book—you're not playing the library
> game, the educator game or the Google game. You're just throwing stuff
> on screens because you can.
>
> "Whether you like it or not" you're pointing students in some
> directions and not others. You're giving these resources different
> amounts of emphasis in your UI. You're including some and not
> others—the others includes all other web pages and all other offline
> resources. You aren't making choices for the user, but you're not
> stepping back and washing your hands of the responsibility to help the
> student.
>
> In a physical-book context, the book is one of the resources. It
> deserves to weighted and evaluated within this larger set of choices.
> It's your responsibility to consider it within the mix of options. If
> the book is excellent and the online resources poor, helping the user
> means communicating this. So, sometimes the OPAC should basically say
> "there's nothing good online about this book; but it's on the shelf
> right over there."
>
> *Certainly in Classics that's still true—the online world is a very
> impoverished window into the discipline.
>
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu