Online Catalogs

WHAT IS IT?

Online catalogs (also known as “online library catalogs” or “online public access catalogs”) are electronic bibliographic databases describing the entirety of the library’s collections (“What is an online library catalog?”).  Along with being a natural response to the digitization of the field, gradually coming to replace the library card catalog of old, online catalogs also address accessibility issues by granting users the opportunity to search through a library’s holdings without having to be on site.

Gary S. Lawrence (1986) describes online catalogs as having three parts:

1. A bibliographic database, and provisions for its management
2. A telecommunications system, which links the user to the database and to other aspects of the online catalog system
3. A user interface, consisting of the means by which the user controls the catalog and the catalog responds to the user (p. 1)

During the early days of online catalogs (around the 1960s and 1970s), many started out as circulation systems or local processing systems, and the public access feature was added later (Yee and Layne, 1998).  According to Christine L. Borgman (1996), the first large-scale implementation of online catalogs occurred during 1975 at Ohio State University and 1978 at the Dallas Public Library.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

Online catalogs provide users with convenient and sometime instantaneous access to the library’s collection. As the field turns more towards digitization, an online presence is not only beneficial but necessary.  It opens the library to a larger community, expanding its reach, and provides another avenue for statistical gathering.

Joseph R. Matthews (1985) describes this increase in access as being provided with:

1. Additional access points beyond the traditional author, title, and subject indexes for the library’s collection is now searchable
2. Hours of availability (users are able to search the database during closed hours)
3. Insight into the bibliographic information of a library’s catalog, which will improve the user’s ability to effectively research and utilize the library’s collection

Online catalogs also encourage and facilitate the expansion of electronic publishing and digital-born material, which benefit libraries in many ways:

• Relieve storage problems
• Give patrons in smallest/most remote libraries timely access to world information
• Users could pursue their interests across disciplines, types of materials and geographic locations
• Having the actual text of many materials available online would finally allow users to find information, rather than find locations to materials that may or may not contain the information being sought. This, more than any other single factor, will revolutionize the way people do research. (Fayen, 1983, p. 108)

WHO ARE THE PRIMARY USERS?

The wonderful thing about online catalogs is how it opens up the library to a broader spread of users.  Anyone with a personal device that enables internet connection can access the online catalog and make use of the library’s database, regardless of proximity.  The primary users of an online catalog would then mirror the primary users of that particular library (in this case: students, researchers, curators, staff/docents, faculty, etc.) along with patrons who may not be directly affiliated with the institution (such as: patrons of another library utilizing interlibrary loans, researchers in need of electronically published text).

IMPORTANT ISSUES

Perhaps the most enduring issue with online catalogs is that of usability.  Thomas A. Peters (1991) describes the issue into the following categories: user behavior problems, user conceptual and attitudinal problems, system problems, and others.

User behavior problems

• Users type more than is required or necessary for the system to run an efficient and effective search
• Underutilization of advanced features
• High failure rates
• Truncation confusion
• Low persistence/early session termination

User conceptual and attitudinal problems

• Users have a problem conceptualization the scope of online catalogs
• Controlled subject vocabularies
• Users don’t often have an understanding of the purpose of authority files
• The syndetic structure of online catalogs may be less user friendly than those of card and book catalogs
• The user’s intentions desires, and expectations regarding precision and recall can vary

System problems

• Availability creates demand
• Design biases can overwhelm the user by providing too many options or choices
• Large retrieval sets are becoming unmanageable
• Effective search formulations almost always contain more variety in terminology than users provide
• It’s expensive!
• Many online catalogs do not help users manage or control the information retrieved
• Downtime and lag

Other issues of online catalogs are those dealing with copyright (who owns the data?) and privacy (who has a right to access which data?) (Fayen, 1983).

LINKS + EXAMPLES

 Thomas J. Watson Library

PROS: minimalistic design, advanced search, search tips (present, easily identifiable, and separated into categories for ease of navigation), option of searching individual libraries including auction catalogs, search results can be filtered, search results separated into categories dependent on relevancy (“highly relevant”, “very relevant”, etc.)
CONS: registration with photo ID needed for requesting books

University of Texas Libraries

PROS: minimalistic design (one sidebar), expansive help section “user guide”, specialized search options (“music,” “ISBN”, “Call Number”, “Subject Heading”), results show image of text if available, results present preview of information (location, call number, availability), option to save items to clipboard

CONS: too much scrolling in the help section

Worcester Art Museum & the libraries of the College of the Holy Cross

PROS: minimalistic design (one sidebar), concise search tips, result refinement, brief search tips available beneath search bar, search examples in the dropdown
CONS: design of top bar is too innocuous (it looks more like an advertisement than a header), color scheme of advanced search unpleasant to the eyes, results presented as term links rather than descriptions of the items themselves

National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum

PROS: minimalistic design (tabbed topbar), search history available, search examples in the dropdown, search tips/help menu open in a separate pop-up window
CONS: minimizing hovertext option is distracting, results presented as term links rather than descriptions of the items themselves

National Gallery of Art Library

PROS: minimalistic design, search history available, brief search tips available beneath search bar, search tips/help menu separated into different links rather than one long page of scrolling
CONS: results presented as term links rather than descriptions of the items themselves

REFERENCES

Borgman, C. L. (1996). “Why are online catalogs still hard to use?” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47 (7): 493-503.

Fayen, E. G. (1983). The online catalog: Improving public access to library materials. White Plains, NY: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc.

Lawrence, G. S. (1986). Online catalogs and system designers. In Matthews, J.R. (Ed.), The impact of online catalogs (1-14). New York, NY: Neal-Schuman    Publishers, Inc.

Matthews, J. R. (1985). Public access to online catalogs (2^nd ed.). New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

Peters, T. A. (1991). The online catalog: A critical examination of public use. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

What is an online library catalog? A database of library materials.  Retrieved from http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit04/primer04_04.phtml

Yee, M. M., & Layne, S. S. (1998.) Improving online public access catalogs. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.