Tanja Merčun

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 ...

Who says that old dogs cannot learn new tricks? : A survey of internet/web usage among seniors

Purpose – In our modern society there is a prevailing belief that computers and the internet are mainly used by younger generations, who grew up with modern technology, and are generally all information literate. However, research shows that through the past ten years more and more older people have started to learn how to use computers and, of course, how to use the internet. The aim of this paper is to investigate and analyse internet usage among seniors on the basis of a case study showing the actual situation in Slovenia.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was carried out among seniors, the participants of different Third Age University programmes, by using a questionnaire, designed for this study. This particular group of seniors was chosen because they lead more active lifestyle than average seniors and the results should be more relevant. Participating in these programmes means they are eager to learn new things and that they have access to computers.Findings – It was found that among the senior...

Coding FRBR-structured bibliographic information in MARC

The lack of support for the FRBR model in current bibliographic standards has been a major bottleneck for the implementation and use of this model in library databases. In this paper we present solutions for coding FRBR structures using MARC and show that it is possible to code even more complex FRBR structures within the current format. This solution promises a migration path for library systems without losing the compatibility with existing standards.

Presenting bibliographic families using information visualization: Evaluation of FRBR-based prototype and hierarchical visualizations

Since their beginnings, bibliographic information systems have been displaying results in the form of long, textual lists. With the development of new data models and computer technologies, the need for new approaches to present and interact with bibliographic data has slowly been maturing. To investigate how this could be accomplished, a prototype system, FrbrVis1, was designed to present work families within a bibliographic information system using information visualization. This paper reports on two user studies, a controlled and an observational experiment, that have been carried out to assess the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)‐based against an existing system as well as to test four different hierarchical visual layouts. The results clearly show that FrbrVis offers better performance and user experience compared to the baseline system. The differences between the four hierarchical visualizations (Indented tree, Radial tree, Circlepack, and Sunburst) were, on the other hand, not as pronounced, but the Indented tree and Sunburst design proved to be the most successful, both in performance as well as user perception. The paper therefore not only evaluates the application of a visual presentation of bibliographic work families, but also provides valuable results regarding the performance and user acceptance of individual hierarchical visualization techniques.

FrbrVis: an information visualization approach to presenting FRBR work families

Although FRBR is becoming an important player in the bibliographic world, we have not seen many discussions or examples of how FRBR-based entities or relationships could best be displayed, explored or interacted with within a user interface. The paper presents a FrbrVis prototype as one possible approach to presenting FRBR-based bibliographic data using hierarchical information visualization structures and looks into how FRBR concepts have been implemented into an interactive user interface display.

Evaluation of information visualization techniques: analysing user experience with reaction cards

The paper originates from the idea that in the field of information visualization, positive user experience is extremely important if we wish to see users adopt and engage with the novel information visualization tools. Suggesting the use of product reaction card method to evaluate user experience, the paper gives an example of FrbrVis prototype to demonstrate how the results of this method could be analysed and used for comparing different designs. The authors also propose five dimensions of user experience (UX) that could be gathered from reaction cards and conclude that the results from reaction cards mirror and add to other performance and preference indicators.

Presenting bibliographic families: Designing an FRBR-based prototype using information visualization

Purpose – Despite the importance of bibliographic information systems for discovering and exploring library resources, some of the core functionality that should be provided to support users in their information seeking process is still missing. Investigating these issues, the purpose of this paper is to design a solution that would fulfil the missing objectives. Design/methodology/approach – Building on the concepts of a work family, functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) and information visualization, the paper proposes a model and user interface design that could support a more efficient and user-friendly presentation and navigation in bibliographic information systems. Findings – The proposed design brings together all versions of a work, related works, and other works by and about the author and shows how the model was implemented into a FrbrVis prototype system using hierarchical visualization layout. Research limitations/implications – Although issues related to discovery and expl...

Presenting and Exploring the Complexity of Bibliographic Relationships

The bibliographic universe is a complex network of interrelated instances of entity types and presentation of such networks to users is challenging. The paper discusses the complexity of these relationships through Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model, presents possible scenarios for displaying them to users via information visualization and gives an account of the features we identified as difficult to implement within our first version of FrbrVis prototype.

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.

BIBSURF: Discover Bibliographic Entities by Searching for Units of Interest, Ranking and Filtering

BIBSURF is a system demonstrating search, ranking and filtering of bibliographic RDF data that is organized in form of entities representing intellectual endeavor at different levels of abstraction: item, manifestation, expression, work.