As both a cataloguer and a catalogue user, I know that I come to the catalogue with a range of different needs and expectations. Sometimes I know exactly what I want - I may even know that it is in stock - so I am using the catalogue to check where I can find it or to make sure that there is a copy on the shelf when I call into the library on the way home. At other times I'm not at all sure what I want.
It seems to me that we cater very well for the person with a clear idea of what they are looking for. If you know the name of the person who created it and the title, you'll probably be able to find it straight off. If you return a number of hits, you'll be able to filter them by date, or by format - if you want the most up-to-date travel guide, or the DVD rather than the Blu-Ray version. Our catalogues are designed to make it as easy as possible to get straight to your destination, and that's great (as I said in the previous post) for people who know what they want.
If I have no idea at all of what I want, even then the catalogue will help, by providing lists of new acquisitions, or links to shortlists or titles of current interest - the "what's new" or "what's hot" kind of lists. These are pretty much the equivalent of library displays - something to catch your eye when you arrive on the site. There is usually scope for doing a lot more of this kind of thing, but at least most catalogues offer something.
However, let's suppose I want some books about Florence, because I am going to be spending a long weekend there and I want to plan my visit. If I were to go into my local library and speak to a real live librarian, then pretty soon we would be having a conversation about my holiday, and what I might like to do while I am there, and with luck I would be steered in the right direction to find a book that satisified me.
But if I go to the catalogue, and type "Florence" in the keyword box - I am going to get a great mass of stuff and very little help in trying to sort it out. First of all, I am going to find that I've got stuff about Florence Nightingale, and whole series of the Magic Roundabout (it might take me a while to work out why), and I have to filter these out, and there is probably no easy or obvious way of doing it. Even if I ignore all these, then there is no helpful guide asking me whether I am going to be spending all my time in galleries, or restaurants, or watching the football - or am I going to be hiring a bicycle and would I like a guide to cycle touring?
Of course there used to be a tool that did just this and it was called a subject index. It collocated distributed relatives - so it was very useful for refining a search (making it possible to define which aspect of a subject you were looking for) but it was also brilliant for reminding you of aspects of a subject you might not have thought of and which the library had in stock. It was the nearest you could get to having a conversation with a friendly and informed librarian.
So why don't any of our wonderful new online catalogues incorporate subject indexes? The most help they offer is a "Did you mean...?" which covers little more than mistyping. Why can't we make it as easy to find and choose between Florentine history and Tuscan cycle tours, as between the 2nd and 3rd edition of a book or between the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of Shrek 2?
