Laurabelle’s Blog

Dorothea thinks call number searches are mislabeled, that users don't know what a call number is or what it could be used for, and she does have a point.

The real problem is that this capability simply does not belong in the initial search screen! What do you do when you browse in service of a research goal? Go to any random shelf? No, of course not. You find a shelf you're interested in first (often through a known-item book search), then you browse. I mean, duh; this pattern of behavior doesn't take Ph.D researchers to figure out.

So to do something analogous, the OPAC should offer the browse functionality not in the initial search screen, but on the bibliographic-record display page, so that someone who's found a hot prospect can check for others. Nor it shouldn't be called call number browse, either—it should be some variant on nearby books or on the shelf with this book... or just simply more like this.

Dorothea is far from wrong; it's true that users often don't understand library jargon, intuitive as it may seem to us. (For what it's worth, I can't remember when I didn't know that I could browse the catalog by call number.) On the other hand, her analysis is missing a very important piece: not all libraries are the same, and neither are (or should be) their catalogs.

Let's take the University of Washington Libraries, for example. Dorothea's verbiage ideas would work great in that context, because it's a monolithic university library where different locations hold books on different subjects. If two books have a similar call number, they're virtually guaranteed to sit next to each other on the shelf.

Now let's take KCLS: one of the largest public library systems in the country (and we're talking top 5 or even top 2 here, depending on how you count the numbers), with over 40 branches and about 4 million items. The main problem with the nearby books wording here is that a call-number browse probably won't find books that are actually next to each other on the shelf, even though they might be if they lived in the same building. I know Dorothea wasn't arguing for any specific wording, but my point is that nothing will work for all situations.

The other problem I see with getting rid of the words call number index is that a call number index has multiple uses, and favoring any one of those uses over another leads to obscuring all the others. For example, many KCLS patrons use call number searches to find titles that are currently on order. At one point I used call number to locate DVDs whose titles begin with the letter B. Labeling the tool as what it is rather than what it does enables all of its uses to be recognized equally.

(But as long as I'm on the topic of vocabulary, I really don't like the wording more like this because if you don't know how whatever system you're using operationalizes likeness, that feature is absolutely useless. See Google, which has never turned up anything at all useful when I've clicked that link.)

The other problem with such a radical renaming is that those users who know what a call number index is would no longer be able to find it behind those new words. I think the answer is education... but like everyone else, I don't have any magical answers.

As for who designs OPACs... that would be the ILS vendors. The problem isn't that they aren't paying attention to creating a good one; it's that they're creating a one-size-fits-none solution. It's up to the libraries to customize their OPACs according to their collection and their users, but they may not have the expertise or the money to do a good job (and OPACs are never as customizable as their vendors would like you to believe). It ain't as simple as it looks.