The Job of Organizing

Where librarians and information professionals were the ones the public turned to with their cataloging needs; books, print materials, even online library catalogs were organized and maintained by information professionals. Yet with the onset of Web 2.0, information access and classification is in the hands of everyday people like you and me.



According to Michael Casey's "Looking Toward Catalog 2.0," (Courtney, Chapter 2), librarians have different cataloging needs than the end user. What the end user wants is a database that is easily searchable, corrects mistakes, conducts advanced searches, and provides relevancy rankings, perhaps even with user feedback. Sound too demanding? It is only what a user gets from almost every search engine. The user is having a more fulfilling interaction with web searches than with the out-of-date and "irrelevant" catalogs of the past.



So what does this mean for librarians? It means first of all understanding and appreciating the needs of the user. It makes sense that the features one finds on a search engine appeal to the everyday user. Spell checking in search boxes helps to widen the search for what the user intended, as opposed to what the user actually typed. Amazon's use of aggregated rating systems and user feedback make it an appealing site for those searching for a certain type of book, or books about subjects or by authors in a less daunting way than in perusing the library catalog with its rigid structure (and sometimes outdated information). Casey's ideas for what might be included in Catalog 2.0 are dead on (p. 19-21). Social bookmarking sites seem to offer what the user is looking for in a catalog. Through my own experience with de.li.cious, the user provides tagging phrases that more closely resemble what another user is looking for. We speak similar language, have similar knowledge bases, and are familiar enough with searching on the internet to recognize good search terms. It is also helpful that in sites such as this, I can not only provide my own cataloging system through the language I use, but I am also able to search for other popular websites with the same tagging system, as well as see what other tags users have given a particular website. By looking at additional tags, I am made aware of additional search terms that may be beneficial to me.



An overhaul like this requires money and, more importantly time. Libraries can make technological adjustments to their cataloging systems if great enough effort is made. Through technologies like mashups, systems can be constructed at lesser cost that still meet the users' more sophisticated needs. Catalog 2.0 requires more than libraries simply making their catalogs available on the web, but rather requires are re-thinking of search strategies and indexing through the eyes of the user and their use of the internet as a social and dynamic entity.