Re: [IUG] Cataloging for Encore

["Byron C. Mayes" <bcmayes at temple dot edu>]

On Dec 17, 2007 9:28 AM, Wynn, Stephen <swynn at truman dot edu> wrote:

> I spoke last week about III's next-generation interface Encore, with an
> III rep who told me that whenever they do a demo, the catalogers present
> get very excited about the idea of adding tags in Encore. ..



> Since "Mountain biking" is a SEE reference in the authority record for
> "All-terrain cycling," why do you need to add it as an Encore tag?


The problem with SEE references in the catalog is that it results in an
extra step for the user. A subject search on "mountain biking" yields the
decidedly unfriendly message:

"* Mountain Biking *" is not used in this library's catalog.
*All terrain cycling *is used instead.
Try a search for All terrain
cycling<http://mail.google.com/search/d?All+terrain+cycling>
 .

"All terrain cycling" is an active link, but the user still has a no-hit
search in front of him.

There's always the question of how many users throw a subject search at the
catalog as a first run. A lot of catalogs default to keyword searches, one
reason being to mitigate the general out-of-stepped-ness (is that a word?)
of LCSH terms. However a keyword search only pulls up records including the
search term. In our catalog at Temple, Zinn's cycling primer would not be
found in a keyword search for "mountain biking" because neither the phrase
nor the words "mountain" nor "biking" appear anywhere in the record.

One could go further and note that "Mountain biking" is not an
immediately related subject for "Outdoor recreation" nor for "Sports" (I
think you can get to them by traversing the hierarchy). Several works in
Temple's catalog cover mountain biking, but carry one of these subjects
instead of "All terrain cycling."

So a user using the term "mountain biking" in our catalog would completely
miss Zinn's cycling primer in a keyword search, and experience "searchus
interruptus" when doing a subject search (which he may not even do).
Presumably a tag would mitigate both unsatisfactory experiences for the
user.

Of course, he could form a nerdy complex search involving parentheses,
truncations, and OR statements but mountain biking is supposed to be cool.
:)

Byron

-- 
Byron C. Mayes, MLS
Head, Library Systems & Technology
Temple University * Philadelphia, PA
ByronC dot Mayes at temple dot edu


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---