Second Blog Post

Calvin Mooers' theory (or better known as Mooers' Law) is an interesting and troubling one when looked at from a librarian's point of view. As librarians, we are trained to (and often inherently drawn to) love information and we study throughout our entire careers, even after graduate school, how to find, use, interpret, and seek out information. It is the definition behind the work that we do. Although this is true, what Mooers proposes as a law is just as necessary to a librarian's repertoire as knowing how to find and distribute information. Mooers' Law posits that people will not use information retrieval systems if it is more painful for them to actually have the information. Mooers makes a good point--oftentimes, information is a burden. There are many implications and responsibilities when it comes to having information--things need to be sought out, interpreted, applied to an issue, or just basically read, seen, or heard. These things take time and energy, thus, information retrieval systems are often ignored by the public unless they absolutely must have a certain piece of information. This Law has many implications for librarians--we need to make sure that when people do use the information retrieval systems that we provide for them, the systems need to be clear, easy to use, and allow the user to get the information they need as quickly, accurately, concisely, and easy as we can. Although I was not fully aware of Mooers' Law prior to reading this article, I believe that the knowledge that comes from it is extremely necessary to librarians and their thinking on systems, which brings us to the second article that we read.

In Antelman, Lynema, and Pace's article "Toward a Twenty-First Century Library Catalog," the authors explain the issues that are inherent to the current library catalog, explaining the first- and second-generation online catalogs, and the need for further advancement of these online catalogs. In all things, librarians need to be thinking of their users. This may seem like a basic principle to live by as a librarian, but oftentimes it seems as though we forget who we are serving. What the North Carolina State University did was to take a step back from their daily routine, and really analyze the ways in which the user was and was not being served by the catalog. Because the catalog is often the access point for users, it is important that it be relevant and easy to use, allowing for both discovery and locational information for resources. NCSU, unafraid of taking calculated risks, attempted to integrate the Endeca's Information Access Platform, which is a platform used by web sites, which make them more appealing to users. NCSU wanted to take the searching methods employed by this platform, and make it easier for users to find the most relevant information for them, enhancing browsability, improving subject access, and generally making the searching process more user-friendly. NCSU attempted to accomplish this by employing spell correction, "did you mean..." responses, the implementation of "dimensions" that allow users to redefine their searches by clicking on different facets to narrow it down, relevance ranking (which was the thing most appreciated by users, it seems) and better browsability (allowing for searching without having to enter a query). After the implementation of the new service, the university did a study to see if users were finding more relevant things faster than they had before, and found that generally, the students were happy with the improved system. Although this new "discovery portal" OPAC has come a long way from what OPACs have been, there are still things that need to be improved such as the widening of the scope, an ability to use more colloquial language in search queries, and a way for users to supply feedback on the relevance of the material they found. However, even with the kinks to work out and more advancements to be made, there have still been significant strides made with these new developments.

Placing these two articles side-by-side says a lot for the state of information seeking through systems today and what we need to be focusing on when we create or attempt to improve our systems. Mooers' Law states basically that users take the path of least resistance, as it were, and will not seek out information if it is in any way painful to them. At the end of his article, Mooers makes a good point, stating that although his Law is true, there will be times when information is needed and sought, and for those people, the systems need to be as user-friendly as possible. There is nothing we as librarians can do about the outside sources of people not wanting information, but we can improve our own systems to make the process less burdensome and painful for those who use our information retrieval systems. NCSU has realized this notion and has gone so far as to implement a new system into their OPAC, allowing users more control over their search, and allowing for relevance ranking and "did you mean..." queries that allow the users to have a more narrowed focus and thus find the relevant information that they need with less sifting and sorting through the things they do not need. I think that what we as librarians can take away from these articles is a need to focus on the user, understand the way they search and their motivations, and cater to them, allowing them a smoother process, thus bringing them back to our systems instead of turning to the Internet. I think that one question that can be asked from these readings comes from something that Antelman, et al., raised: users do not seem to understand HOW to search properly, and that is part of the problem with them being able to get over the barriers that controlled vocabularies and subject headings seem to hold for them. So, how can we use our understanding Mooers' Law, and the implications of the study done at NCSU to better improve the knowledge that the users have? If they do not know the difference between a subject and a keyword, how can we educate them to make their searches clearer while still using these new methods to help them search? Is it still our job to teach Boolean searching if we are coming up with new methods of searching? Something to think about, perhaps.

Bibliography:

Antelman, Kristin, Emily Lynema, & Andrew Pace. "Toward a Twenty-First Century Library Catalog." Information Technology & Libraries 25.3 (2006): 128-139.

Mooers, C.N. "Mooers' Law or, Why Some Retrieval Systems Are Used and Others Are Not." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 23.1 (1996): 22-23.