Using Qualitative Methods to Analyze Online Catalog Interfaces

Abstract

Many experts have proposed an evolution toward “next generation catalogs,” whose main features are partly inspired by commercial websites such as Google or Amazon. This article examines pros and cons of this integration. It also aims to show how a qualitative approach helps to broaden understanding of web communication mechanisms. After discussing some examples of “next generation catalog” features, I analyze the interface of an online catalog responding to different users' information needs and seeking behaviors. In the conclusion I suggest that the right approach to integration is a “translation” (not a “copy and paste”) between commercial and library logics.

KEYWORDS:

• library websites
• online catalogs
• semiotics
• textual analysis
• qualitative analysis

Notes

¹Tanja Merčun and Maja Žumer, “New Generation of Catalogues for the New Generation of Users: A Comparison of Six Library Catalogues,” Program 42, no. 3 (2008): 243–261.

²Lorcan Dempsey, Constance Malpas, and Brian Lavoie, “Collection Directions: The Evolution of Library Collections and Collecting,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 3 (2014): 393–423. See also Lorcan Dempsey, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention,” in Catalogue 2.0: The Ultimate User Experience, ed. Sally Chambers (London: Facet Publishing, 2013).

³Karl V. Fast and D. Grant Campbell, “‘I Still Like Google’: University Student Perceptions of Searching OPACs and the Web,” in Proceedings of the 67th ASIS&T Annual Meeting, eds. Linda Schamber and Carol L. Barry (Medford: Information Today, 2004): 138–146.

⁴Tamar Sadeh, “User-Centric Solutions for Scholarly Research in the Library,” Liber Quarterly 17, nos. 3/4 (2007). Sadeh added other features (interactive experience, recommendations), but they are more typical of Web 2.0 than of search engines. On the same theme, see also Tamar Sadeh, “Time for a Change: New Approaches for the New Generation of Library Users,” New Library World 108, nos. 7/8 (2007): 307–316.

⁵Karen Markey, “The Online Library Catalog. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained?” D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 1/2 (2007).

⁶Ross Housewright, Roger C. Schonfeld, and Kate Wulfson, Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2012, April 8, 2013, http://www.sr.ithaka.org/sites/default/files/reports/Ithaka_SR_US_Faculty_Survey_2012_FINAL.pdf (accessed January 15, 2015).

⁷See notes 11, 13, and 14.

⁸Lorcan Dempsey, “Always on: Libraries in a World of Permanent Connectivity,” First Monday 14, no. 1 (2009), http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2291/2070 (accessed September 23, 2014).

⁹Karen Calhoun, The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools, report prepared for the Library of Congress, March 17, 2006, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf (accessed January 7, 2015).

¹⁰Among others, see Tanja Merčun and Maja Žumer, “New Generation of Catalogues for the New Generation of Users” and Lorcan Dempsey, Constance Malpas, and Brian Lavoie, “Collection Directions: The Evolution of Library Collections and Collecting.” On these themes see also Paul G. Weston, “Il catalogo: dalla tradizione ai nuovi servizi” [Catalog: from tradition to new services], IV giornata delle biblioteche siciliane. Biblioteche e informazione nell’era digitale, May 26, 2006, http://eprints.rclis.org/19468/1/Catalogo%20allargato_elis.pdf (accessed March 10, 2014); Andrea Marchitelli, “Il catalogo connesso: dal silos di dati al network informativo” [Connected catalog: from data silo to informative network], La biblioteca connessa, March 13–14, 2014, http://eprints.rclis.org/22739/1/Il%20catalogo%20connesso%20-%20full.pdf (accessed March 29, 2014).

¹¹Merčun and Žumer, “New Generation of Catalogues for the New Generation of Users.”

¹²Sharon Q. Yang and Kurt Wagner, “Evaluating and Comparing Discovery Tools: How Close Are We Towards Next Generation Catalog?” Library Hi Tech 28, no. 4 (2010): 690–709.

¹³Similar research cited by Yang and Wagner are: Jenny Emanuel, “Next Generation Catalogs: What Do They Do and Why Should We Care?” Reference User Services Quarterly 49, no. 2 (2009): 117–120; Truong D. Luong and Chern L. Liew, “The Evaluation of New Zealand Academic Library OPACs: A Checklist Approach,” The Electronic Library 27, no. 3 (2009): 376–393; Paula L. Webb and Muriel D. Nero, “OPACs in the Clouds,” Computers in Libraries 29, no. 9 (2009): 18–22.

¹⁴For an introduction to usability tests, see Roxanne O’Connell, “Web Site Usability. Tips, Techniques and Methods,” in Visualizing the Web, eds. Sheree Josephson, Susan B. Barnes and Mark Lipton (New York: Peter Lang, 2010): 123–140.

¹⁵For a smart (but professional and accurate) introduction to formal usability tests, see Steve Krug, Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems (Berkeley: New Riders, 2009).

¹⁶For instance, Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability (Berkeley: New Riders, 2000); Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability (Berkeley: New Riders, 2006); Jakob Nielsen and Raluca Budiu, Mobile Usability (Berkeley: New Riders, 2013).

¹⁷Nielsen and Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability.

¹⁸For further reading about semiotics and textual analysis, see works by Umberto Eco or Algirdas Julien Greimas.

¹⁹Piero Polidoro, “La coherencia textual en los sitios web: desde las estructuras narrativas y discursivas hasta su manifestació” [Textual coherence in websites: From narrative and discoursive structures to their manifestation], De Signis 21 (2014): 42–50.

²⁰See Nielsen, Designing Web Usability; Nielsen and Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability; Nielsen and Budiu, Mobile Usability.

²¹See, for instance, “More like this” item in Merčun and Žumer's checklist (Table 1).

²²Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0 (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2009).

²³On the importance of symbolic and physical boundaries (frames, windows, doors) in visual representation see Victor Stoichita, L’instauration du tableau [The invention of the painting] (Paris: Mèridiens Klincksieck 1993) and Louis Marin, De la répresentation [About representation] (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil 1994). Stoichita and Marin's proposals have been applied to website interface analysis in Piero Polidoro, “Teoria dei generi e siti web” [Genre theory and websites], Versus 94/95/96 (2003): 213–229.

²⁴Dempsey, in “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries,” proposes to distinguish four sources of metadata: professional (produced by staff in support of particular business aims), crowdsourced (produced by users of systems), programmatically promoted (produced by automatic extraction of metadata from digital files, automatic classification, entity identification, and so on), intentional or transactional (produced from data about choices and transactions).

²⁵According to Kaushik the “obsession” for page views is losing ground, but he admits they “are still a decent measure of success” (cf. Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0, 36).

²⁶Nielsen and Loranger, Prioritizing Web Usability.

²⁷Amit Singhal, “Giving You Fresher, More Recent Search Result,” Google official blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.it/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html (accessed March 20, 2014).

²⁸Lev Manovich, Software Takes Command (New York, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

²⁹Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2007), 33–37.

³⁰Marcia Bates, “The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface,” Online Review 13 (1989), http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/berrypicking.html

³¹See the “Methodology” section in this article.

³²Umberto Eco, Semiotics and Philosophy of Language (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

³³http://www.serialssolutions.com/assets/resources/Brochure_AquaBrowser_082610.pdf (accessed March 30, 2014).

³⁴John Wenzler, “LibraryThing and the Library Catalog: Adding Collective Intelligence to the OPAC,” September 7, 2007, http://www.carl-acrl.org/ig/carlitn/9.07.2007/LTFL.pdf (accessed January 15, 2015).