Hi Kelley - I conducted that usability test on Scherzo and wrote that
report so I can answer your questions!  I think a work-focused approach can
work for users, but we had to scale back on what we assumed users would
understand on the search results page.  After this test of the system, we
changed the search results interface to identify within the works list how
many scores and recordings contained that work, so the works list looked
more like a facet.  The works list then wasn't just a list of titles, but
was tied more directly to the recordings/scores result list (which is
directly below the works list on the search results page).

I do think that some of the testing results we saw reflected how users are
used to searching for music in traditional catalogs.  While the work is a
key concept for musicians, they may have gotten used to the fact that
searching for or scanning a results list for a work title often isn't easy
(or even possible) in a library catalog so either the title of the album or
a person's name is the real key to finding stuff.  I think that also might
have been part of what threw people off seeing the works listed in the
search results.  They didn't believe they were seeing titles of songs -
they thought they were seeing titles of albums or something that was some
sort of physical item.  They weren't really sure what it was and so they
just skipped that list of things.  So adding the info that, for example, a
work title is found on 5 recordings/scores really helped to identify the
works list as such.

Music is kind of unique within FRBR since several works can be involved in
a single manifestation (recording or score) and a single work can have many
different expressions (different performances by different people of the
same work).  Other types of resources like books and movies don't often
line up with the FRBR model the same way.  I can't say for sure whether or
not the interface we arrived at after this testing (
http://vfrbr.info/scherzo/) could be used for other work-based resources
with a works list serving as a facet to narrow down results, but it seems
to be a good use of the FRBR model.

Here's an example of a search that I think brings out the strength of what
this type of works list can do.  Searching in Scherzo for something like
"symphony no. 5" as Keyword results in several works with that same (or
similar) title and lots of recordings and scores that contain expressions
of all of the different "symphony no. 5" works.  The facet nature of
showing how many recordings/scores contain that work can help to
distinguish which work is the symphony no. 5 you actually want and helps
identify that works list as a list of "symphony no. 5" works by different
composers.

I hope this is helpful - it was an interesting project to test these
FRBRized search concepts and it would be great to see further experiments
with this idea, specifically with non-music resources to see if it can be
applied or not.  Let me know if you have any more questions about what we
did with the Scherzo interface and best of luck on your project!

Julie Hardesty
Metadata Analyst
Metadata Resources & Systems
Library Technologies
Indiana University



On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:58 PM, Kelley McGrath <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks, Jon. I have seen the Variations work and also talked to Jenn Riley
> about it. It has definitely influenced me, although we are going in a
> slightly different direction and moving images have some different needs
> from music.
>
> One thing about Variations that struck me is this paragraph from the
> usability testing report (
> http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/projectDoc/usability/usabilityTest/ScherzoUTestReport.pdf
> ):
>
> "There was an assumption among the development team that works would be a
> window for organizing and narrowing results in a way that users searching
> for scores and recordings would find useful. One of the main ideas behind
> FRBR is that the work, or the intellectual entity that is produced by
> people and is packaged in many forms, is the core information – Scherzo’s
> interface reflected that organization. 4 (See Appendix E, Fig. 14 for
> Scherzo’s search results page.) But the participants tended to latch on to
> a person’s name and search for that name in a particular role. The reasons
> for this are not completely clear and further discussion follows, but it is
> worth bearing this finding in mind. Additionally, from the search results
> page, work results were clicked only 14 times in comparison to items in
> recordings & scores , which were clicked 65 times. Regardless of how the
> FRBRized data is organized on the back end, the interface needs to reflect
> the way users want to search, and that might not mean with search results
> organized by work."
>
> Does this mean that a work-focused approach is not actually what users
> want or need? Does it mean that the work-centered approach needs to be
> implemented differently in the user interface? Are these results somehow
> specific to music? Do they reflect users' familiarity with the typical
> library catalog and the strategies they've become accustomed to using?
>
> It does suggest to me that there should be more studies on how users
> interact with FRBRized data (and not just the clustering that so many
> discovery interfaces do now, but real FRBR-based data) and how FRBRized
> data is best presented.
>
> Kelley
>
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Dunn, Jon William Butcher <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> Hi Kelley,
>
> If you haven't already, you might want to look at the music score and
> sound recording FRBRization work done on the Variations-FRBR project here
> at Indiana University. I'm not sure how directly useful this would be for
> your work with moving images, but there may be some useful mapping ideas:
>
> FRBR XML schemas:
> http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.1/index.shtml
>
> MARC->FRBR mapping specifications:
> http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/projectDoc/metadata/mappings/spring2010/vfrbrSpring2010mappings.shtml
>
> Java FRBRization code and documentation:
> http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/projectDoc/index.shtml
>
> Jon
>