Maja Zumer

New Generation of Catalogues for the New Generation of Users: A Comparison of Six Library Catalogues.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the problems and issues faced by online library catalogues. It aims to establish how libraries have undertaken the mission of developing the next generation catalogues and how they compare to new tools such as Amazon.Deign/methodology/approach – An expert study was carried out in January 2008 to evaluate six library catalogues (one traditional and five recently modernised) and compare them to Amazon.Findings – While the traditional catalogue has stayed far behind, the modernised catalogues have taken two different approaches in becoming the “next generation catalogue”. Two catalogues focused on improving functionality while two others decided to introduce Web/Library 2.0 trends first. At this point, none of the catalogues offer as vast a range of features as Amazon does, but one catalogue managed to surpass Amazon in some of the examined features.Research limitations/implications – The chosen set of tested catalogues may not be representative and ...

Web pages of Slovenian public libraries: evaluation and guidelines

The content and quality of 28 Slovenian public library Web pages were studied in 2001 and 2002. The research was performed by students of Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies (University of Ljubljana). In that way, student ability of Web page evaluation was also tested. The results show that while libraries are trying to modernise their work, the content of their Web pages is still predominantly oriented towards traditional library materials and services. Not enough emphasis is given to electronic resources. The potential of new ways of direct communication with the users is not realized. In addition, libraries have problems maintaining their Web sites: often the information is erroneous or outdated. In order to help and guide libraries in the future, a common concept of public library Web site is proposed, followed by content guidelines. Some additional activities (e.g. cooperation of libraries, changes in library education curricula) are proposed.

Functional requirements for subject authority data (FRSAD) : a conceptual model

The purpose of authority control is to ensure consistency in representing a value - a name of a person, a place name, or a term or code representing a subject - in the elements used as access points in information retrieval. The primary purpose of this study is to produce a framework that will provide a clearly stated and commonly shared understanding of what the subject authority data/record/file aims to provide information about, and the expectation of what such data should achieve in terms of answering user needs.

Functional requirements for bibliographic records: an investigation of two prototypes

Purpose – This paper aims to establish how the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model, which holds a lot of potential in theory, works in practice. It also aims to identify, and if possible, give solutions to problems found in two of the existing prototypes.Design/methodology/approach – An independent evaluation and comparison of two of the most recent FRBR‐based prototypes, OCLC FictionFinder and the LibraryLabs, was carried out in January 2007.Findings – FictionFinder focuses almost exclusively on the concept of work, while the LibraryLabs prototype applies an FRBR‐like structure only as part of a larger group of experiments. Neither of the prototypes fully follows FRBR, owing to issues associated with current cataloguing practice and the model itself. These barriers also cause some practical shortcomings for these prototypes, however new results displays clearly enhance the user experience.Research limitations/implications – The prototypes may not be representative of...

Comparison and evaluation of the user interfaces of e‐journals

Purpose – Aims to present a comparison and evaluation of four user interfaces of web‐based e‐journals (Science Direct, ProQuest Direct, EBSCO Host and Emerald).Design/methodology/approach – The systems were assessed in an expert study according to accepted guidelines regarding user friendliness and functionality. User friendliness features studied were: language(s) and type(s) of interface; navigation options; personalization; and screen features. Functions inspected were: database selection; query formulation and reformulation; results manipulation; and help.Findings – Many similarities were found, but some differences among the systems were also discovered and analysed in detail. The greatest differences were found in the area of query formulation, and between the interface languages and types.Research limitations/implications – The user interfaces of four full‐text IR systems offering e‐journals which are accessible at the University of Ljubljana are surveyed.Practical implications – The interfaces are...

Mental models of the bibliographic universe. Part 2: comparison task and conclusions

Purpose – The paper aims to provide some insight into mental models of the bibliographic universe and how they compare with functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) as a conceptual model of the bibliographic universe.Design/methodology/approach – To get a more complete picture of the mental models, different elicitation techniques were used. The three tasks of the paper were: card‐sorting, concept mapping and comparison task. The paper deals with comparison task, which consisted of interviews and rankings, and provides a discussion of the results of the paper as a whole.Findings – Results of the ranking part of the comparison task confirm the findings of concept mapping task. In both cases, while there are individual differences between mental models, on average they gravitate towards FRBR.Research limitations/implications – This is a small study and it provides only a glimpse of the implications of using FRBR as a conceptual basis for cataloguing. More FRBR‐related user studies are needed...

National library web sites in Europe: an analysis

Purpose – An overview of the contents and design of web pages of the European national libraries.Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical part features the concepts, problems and guidelines for design related to web sites of national libraries. Based on this knowledge, an expert evaluation was carried out, including a brief overview of all homepages of European national libraries, accessible from the Gabriel server in 2004, as well as a much broader survey of web sites of nine national libraries (Austria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Italy (Florence), Poland, Slovenia, Spain, UK).Findings – The survey shows that European national library web sites do, in fact, have a common core of content and, in large part, follow the design guidelines, but there are still some deviations from the recommendations. National libraries of the economically better developed countries have better web sites in terms of the following guidelines, whereas national libraries of the Eastern and Southern European count...

Information searching behaviour of young Slovenian researchers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of an empirical study of information behaviour of young Slovenian researchers.Design/methodology/approach – Built on some well‐known models of scholarly information behaviour the study complements a previously conducted study of the same population, which focused on the aspects of user friendliness. This second study is an attempt to shape a more detailed picture of the investigated user group. Presented are types of scholarly information behaviour, enriched by some complementary issues regarding their behaviour as digital users.Findings – The respondents were found to express many of the features of both digital scholars and other users of digital technology. Direct searching and power browsing are most often expressed searching behaviours; also common are probing and accessing. Collecting behaviour is mostly expressed through “squirrelling”, and sometimes gathering. Satisfaction with the system and with search results is very influential, bu...

The completeness of articles and citation in the Slovene Wikipedia

Purpose – The purpose of this research was to examine the number and type of sources cited by featured articles from the Slovene Wikipedia with the purpose of assessing their quality. A sample of random articles was also procured in order to give a clearer picture of the content of the Slovene Wikipedia. Design/methodology/approach – A research was conducted on 122 featured articles from the Slovene Wikipedia from 2009, 2010 and 2011. The following aspects of the articles were analyzed: topic and originality of the article and number, language and type of sources cited. Findings – The results have shown that most of the featured articles are adapted from the English Wikipedia, the most common topics being science, sports and history. Based on these results the authors have concluded that despite some deficiencies the featured articles on the Slovene Wikipedia are of much higher quality compared to random articles. Research limitations/implications – The biggest research limitation is the ever changing nat...

Interactive Displays for the Next Generation of Entity-Centric Bibliographic Models

The model of bibliographic entities defined in the IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) represents a major transition from the digital card catalog to databases containing a rich structure of entities and relationships with well-defined semantics. However, the question of how to best search and present this entity-centric bibliographic data remains a challenge. In this paper we present a system for entity-centric search and a user study on how the displays of the FRBR entities compare in their ability to support different user tasks.