[Sigia-l] integrated catalogues?

[Karl Fast]

> Libraries have a long tradition of designing things that are hard to
> use, cryptic to understand and generally produce sub-par results.

In their defense, libraries and library-related systems were often
early adopters and on the leading edge. They got a few things wrong
in the long run, and they have been slow to adapt and catch up. But
for many years they were way ahead in quite a few things.

MARC and Z39.50 are good examples. So are OPACs and services like
Dialog and ERIC and Worldcat. The library world was working on
information retrieval related topics back in the late 50s and early
60s. Most of my examples were working systems in the 70s and were
reasonably common by the early 80s. Before the Apple IIe was cool.

Today, most of these systems look primitive and awkward. The user
experience was usually atrocious. But the whole notion of user
experience was unknown. Even the term 'user-centered design' wasn't
common (Norman & Draper's book "User centered system design" wasn't
published until 1986).

But all that aside, I think the biggest challenges have been related
to inertia and infrastructure. It's hard to make rapid changes when
you've invested three decades to develop information systems based
on certain technologies and philosophies. There are technical
issues, to be sure. But there are also philosophical perspectives
that produce difficult and deeply rooted cultural and political
issues. These are probably even harder to overcome. And then there
are things that go back to before we had computers; things like LCC
and LCSH and AACR2. 

Libraries are not starting from a blank slate. This has some
advantages, like lots of highly structured content to work with, but
it has some big drawbacks. I think one biggest of these is speed. It
takes time to change infrastructure and philosophies. And, to make
it worse, libraries have always moved slowly relative to the rest of
the culture, which is a good thing (think Stewart Brand's pace
layering, particularly the Long Now foundation).

I have been critical of libraries and their technologies. But I've
generally made these criticisms in the hope that it will help
illuminate some new directions. I think we're seeing this happen.
(though certainly not because of anything I have written or said or
done). 

For example, Access is a library technology conference held in
Canada every year. The last few years they have been talking a lot
about blogging, open source, RSS, and so forth. This year our own
Gene Smith talked about tagging and folksonomies, and someone else
spoke on GreaseMonkey.





-- 
Karl Fast
http://www.livingskies.com/