[Sigia-l] Re: Point of View: New metaphors for user interfaces

[Bill Quimby]

hkdunston reports

> I'm working on a library project right now and yesterday in a  meeting, 
> several librarians laughed hysterically at the suggestion  that anyone would 
> *enjoy* using a card catalogue. Using a card  catalogue as a metaphor for an 
> interface seems to me sort of like  building a car and instead of a steering 
> wheel, using reins --  because people are more familiar with riding horses.
> 

I do not here defend the card catalog (I participated in the destruction of two
of them!) but would like to point out that in the early stages of the "toss /not
toss" debate questioning frequent users revealed the existence of
"serendipitous" searching - i. e. due to extensive cross-referencing the process
of searching for one thing often led, to the users pleasure, to the discovery of
other useful sources.

Of course Google and others now do the same, if one has patience (in fact I am
often "serendipitously" led to topics having absolutely nothing to do with my
goal), but in the card catalog this seemingly serendipitous phenomenon was the
result of decades-old rules and policies, plus enormous hours of staff time.

I think that this alters the metaphor somewhat. I imagine that we will find in a
few more years that while the Googles continue to expand satisfying one kind of
need, more focused and controlled search engines and sites satisfying another
kind of need will as well. And in fact the library catalog that has replaced the
card catalog - the electronic one - is not "dead", exactly - it could expand
in interesting ways if the development dollars were there. (Given the usual
position of the library - a sub-unit within an organization and dependent upon
the budget of the institution for support - the Head Librarian can not go to
finance capital sources when she/he has an innovative idea, ergo Google etc
advance much more rapidly.)

- Bill



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