Re: Grassroots experiment [COLOR]

[Noelle Van Pulis <vanpulis.1@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sarah,

Several years ago, a patron wanted to find again a book he had borrowed
from our Business Library.  He told me the topic and -- the color (red).
He also said it was new, and knowing subject headings, I guessed the right
one, and then limiting by year, he was able to locate it in a resulting
list of titles.  If I had been able to specify color, perhaps there would
have been only one or two hits.  

I am doubtful the idea will catch on at the national level, but it is a
user-friendly one.    

I also wanted to compliment you on the opening screens for your catalog,
Portia.  They are uncluttered and easy to scan, as is the subsequent
screen.  I would describe the screens as "restrained" in style -- perhaps a
characteristic of law schools...:)

--Noelle Van Pulis
Ohio State Univ.

At 07:56 AM 4/3/00 -0400, Stephen Slovasky wrote:
>Sarah,
>
>Nice work.  Have you considered adding color swatches to your color limit
pull-down menu?  Then again, colors vary by browser, too.
>
>
>
>Stephen Slovasky
>Unit Head
>Bibliographic Information Services
>
>CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY
>231 Capitol Avenue
>Hartford, CT  06106
>
>sslovasky@xxxxxxxxxx
>Voice:  860/566 2827
>Fax:     860/566 3991
>
>
>
>>>> Sarah Boling <sboling@xxxxxxxxxx> 04/01/00 04:21PM >>>
>Most of us have at one time or another heard a patron explain very
>earnestly that they couldn't be sure of the title or whether the author's
>name was Fleming or Grumlin or something like that, but they KNEW the book
>was red.  The traditional cataloging rules have always dodged this vital
>descriptive issue.
>
>While generally respecting the need for sticking to cataloging procedures
>uniform across the library community, and resisting local Balkanizations
>even if they seemed to be on the side of common sense, I have come to
>believe that the feasibility of using this most important finding tool in
>an OPAC environment deserves investigation.  We have established a "limit
>by color" function and a "search by color" function in our OPAC.  The
>actual indexing and programming of the limit function were done by
>Innovative, to whom we are duly grateful.   
>
>Exact hue identification is of course a serious problem.  Color is very
>subjective, people's color vision varies, and a book is a different color
>in a north-facing room, a west-facing room, a room lit by artificial
>light, or next to a yellow book.  A book's color can also vary by several
>shades after it has sat on a cataloging workroom shelf too near the window
>for a year because its relationship to the works it was derived from is
>all fussy.  However, difficulties were made for man to overcome.
>
>Adding the book's color to a bibliographic record does not significantly
>slow down cataloging workflow.  It takes in fact less time to identify a
>book as green than it does to ferret out a metric ruler and verify that it
>is 27 cm. tall. The subjectivity of color identification can be largely
>eliminated by limiting the available choice to one of 15 basic hues.  The
>only other stumbling block is that color identification has never in the
>last hundred years been part of the work of library cataloging, the MARC
>format and AACR2 don't support it, and it is either eccentric or heretical
>to embrace it.  It is, however, spring.
>
>In honor of the day, I offer the results of our tinkering to any
>interested parties.  http://portia.nesl.edu, hornbooks are green, the
>'limit' function is offered after any multiple-hit search, and for the
>utterly typing-challenged,
>http://portia.nesl.edu/screens/well_its_red.html 
>
>Sarah Boling
>New England School of Law Library
>sboling@xxxxxxxxxx 
>
>My employer is not responsible for anything I think up.
>
>
>
>
Noelle Van Pulis
Assoc. Professor &
Coordinator, Catalog Maintenance
 and Authority Control
Cataloging Department, Rm. 031
The Ohio State University Libraries
1858 Neil Ave.
Columbus, Ohio 43210

Ph.: 614-292-1629 
(Internal 4-0942)
Fax: 614-292-7859 
Email: vanpulis.1@xxxxxxxxxx