Allyson Carlyle

Ordering author and work records: an evaluation of collocation in online catalog displays

To investigate the extent to which online catalogs arrange together, or collocate, records representing particular authors and works, a survey compared the displays resulting from five author and five work queries in 18 online catalogs. Dependent variables to measure collocation included the number of times irrelevant records were interfiled among relevant records. Searches for worst‐case authors and works associated with large retrieval sets, including “Homer” and “Paradise Lost,” revealed the effects of Boolean versus string matching, query type, and catalog size on the collocation of relevant records. Results of the survey showed that string matching collocated relevant records more successfully than Boolean matching, that author records were collocated more successfully than work records, and, surprisingly, that catalog size had only a small effect on collocation.

User categorisation of works: toward improved organisation of online catalogue displays

This paper examines a user categorisation of documents related to a particular literary work. Fifty study participants completed an unconstrained sorting task of documents related to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas carol. After they had finished the sorting task, participants wrote descriptions of the attributes they used to create each group. Content analysis of these descriptions revealed categories of attributes used for grouping. Participants used physical format, audience, content description, pictorial elements, usage, and language most frequently for grouping. Many of the attributes participants used for grouping already exist in bibliographic records and may be used to cluster records related to works automatically in online catalogue displays. The attributes used by people in classifying or grouping documents related to a work may be used to guide the design of summary online catalogue work displays.

Developing organized information displays for voluminous works: a study of user clustering behavior

This paper investigates the ways in which people group or categorize documents associated with a voluminous work to guide the construction of organized displays for information retrieval systems (IRSs). Fifty participants completed an unconstrained sorting task in which they were asked to sort into groups 47 documents associated with the voluminous work A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Participants were asked to group documents based on how similar they were to each other and such that the groups would help them to remember how to find them at a later time. Data collected from the sorting task were summarized using cluster analysis, employed to discover common groupings created by participants. Groupings discovered frequently shared physical format, language, and audience attributes.

Making the Pieces Fit: Little Women, Works, and the Pursuit of Quality

ABSTRACT In current cataloging practice, the identification of an item as a member of a particular work set is accomplished by assigning a main entry heading, or main entry citation, in the bibliographic record representing that item. The main entry citation is normally comprised of a primary author name and the uniform title associated with the work. However, the quality of bibliographic records varies, and this means of identification is not universally used by catalogers. Thus, consistent identification and retrieval of records representing editions of works is not guaranteed. Research is reported that investigates the extent to which records that are members of a particular work set may be automatically identified as such.

Hotlist or Bibliography? A Case of Genre on the Web

Bibliography — the collection, description, and arrangement of information items — is a vibrant activity and a popular form of expression on the internet. Yet, fashionable forms of list making are rarely, if ever, considered bibliography. This is a missed opportunity. In this paper, we examine how the traditions of bibliography and collection development can be used to inform the creation of genre support systems and to inform evaluation of a research into bibliographies. Then, we extend the traditional view of bibliography for the internet and show how this new definition can be used to clarify new systems. This work is a small step towards reinvigorating the practices of bibliography and applying its conceptual power to clarify and undergird information systems for selecting, arranging, and accessing links.

Default record displays in Web-based catalogs

The composition of bibliographic record displays may have an impact on catalog use insofar as the failure to display certain elements of description may give users incomplete or misleading information about the item being described. In this study, thirty-eight MARC (machine readable cataloging) fields and subfields are surveyed in 122 Web-based catalogs to determine whether they are included in default single-record displays. Results show that some fields are displayed in almost every catalog surveyed, including the 100 (personal author main entry), 245 ‡a and ‡b subfields (title proper and other title information), and 260 (publication, distribution) fields. Other fields are displayed considerably less frequently, particularly the 490 (untraced series title) and 020 (ISBN) fields. Similar types of fields, such as title fields, are sometimes treated inconsistently, in that some are displayed frequently, and some are not.

Transforming Catalog Displays: Record Clustering for Works of Fiction

SUMMARY Displays grouping retrieved bibliographic record sets into categories or clusters may communicate search results more quickly and effectively to users than current catalog displays providing long alphabetical lists of records. Bibliographic records associated with three large fiction works are analyzed to discover the presence of relationship-type indicators. Preliminary results show that 94% of the records in this study contained indicators of cluster type that would allow them to be correctly identified automatically. However, the clusters formed by the relationship types used here are of unequal size. Because of this, it is suggested that alternative strategies be investigated for their potential to create more useful clustered displays.

Early Literacy in Library Storytimes: A Study of Measures of Effectiveness

Across the nation, librarians work with caregivers and children to encourage engagement in their early literacy programs. However, these early literacy programs that libraries provide have been left mostly undocumented by research, especially through quantitative methods. Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning that Work Successfully (VIEWS2) was designed to test new ways to measure the effectiveness of these early literacy programs for young children (birth to kindergarten), leveraging a mixed methods, quasi-experimental design. Using two innovative tools, researchers collected data at 120 public library storytimes in the first year of research, observing approximately 1,440 children ranging from birth to 60 months of age. Analysis of year-one data showed a correlation between the early literacy content of the storytime program and children’s outcomes in terms of early literacy behaviors. These findings demonstrate that young children who attend public library storytimes are responding to the early literacy content in the storytime programs.

ASIS&T 2008 annual meeting poster FRBR and the 'known-item' search

The purpose of this research is to study the phenomenon of the “known-item search,” to investigate and map out its parameters. The research reported on here is the result of pretesting a survey that will be administered to public and academic library users looking for a particular book, asking them about the extent to which they would accept the substitute of a related item for the one they are looking for. The research is being framed in terms of the 1998 document model, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), in which different levels, or aspects, of content have been identified. FRBR is being incorporated into international library cataloging standards, however, research is only now beginning to be conducted to test the applicability of the model to people who are actually searching for documents. The study has two purposes: first, to improve information systems, particularly online catalogs, using specific knowledge of the range of acceptable items that may be the object of a search, and second, to determine the extent to which the FRBR model is useful in describing entities of interest to library users.

Early Literacy in Library Storytimes, Part 2: A Quasi-Experimental Study and Intervention with Children’s Storytime Providers

Within the peer-reviewed literature, there is a shortage of experimental and quasi-experimental studies examining libraries’ impact on children’s early literacy development. Therefore, Project VIEWS2 (Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning That Work Successfully 2) used a quasi-experimental design to understand whether an intervention to train public library storytime providers in early literacy principles makes a difference in children’s early literacy skills. In the experimental group, comparisons of preintervention and postintervention data showed statistically significant increases in the early literacy behaviors of the providers and attendees in the experimental group. There were no significant changes in the early literacy behaviors of control group providers and their attendees. A purposeful focus on early literacy principles makes a difference in storytime programs and in early literacy behaviors when children attend storytime. This article examines the design and delivery of the intervention, its effects on the study population, and its implications for practice.