Lorcan Dempsey
[Main Articles: 'The Library Catalogue in the New Discovery Environment: Some Thoughts', Ariadne Issue 48]
One of the interesting aspects of the last couple of years is the emergence of several large consolidated information resources - Amazon, iTunes, Google, etc - which have strongly influenced behaviour and expectation. Unlike these resources, the library resource is very fragmented: it is presented as a range of databases, places, and services. In other words, libraries do not aggregate supply very well. There are at least two factors here. Firstly, there is no unified discovery experience, and, secondly, the transaction costs of using the system are often high (transaction costs refer to the cost in time or effort to perform the steps required to meet a goal). There are a range of potential transaction costs, where you have to move between systems, re-key data, or pass authentication challenges: you may have to search several resources, check for locations, make ILL requests, and so on. Compare this to popular Web resources like those mentioned a moment ago. These provide a unified discovery experience and work hard to reduce transaction costs: they aggregate supply. Think of demand. And, again, think of the large Web presences: they aggregate demand by mobilising large network audiences for resources. The fragmentation of library resources reduces the gravitational pull of any one resource on the network. Nor do these resources tend to be projected into user environments such as the course management system or RSS aggregator. There is limited aggregation of demand. Better matching supply and demand closely relates to what has become known, following Chris Anderson, as the long tail argument. (I explore this in more detail elsewhere [4]). The long tail argument is about how a wider range of resources may be found, used or bought in network environments which better match supply and demand through aggregation at the network level.
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In some ways we have end-to-end integrated library systems where the ends are in the wrong places. At one end, we have a catalogue interface which is unconnected to popular user discovery environments or workflows. It is often a somewhat flat experience with low gravitational pull in the crowded network information space. We expect people to discover the catalogue before they can discover what is in (part of) the collection. And this points to the issue at the other end: the 'fulfilment' options open out onto only a part of the universe of materials which is available to the user: that local catalogued collection.
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In a pre-network world, where information resources were relatively scarce and attention relatively abundant, users built their workflow around the library. In a networked world, where information resources are relatively abundant, and attention is relatively scarce, we cannot expect this to happen. Indeed, the library needs to think about ways of building its resources around the user workflow. We cannot expect the user to come to the library any more; in fact, we cannot expect the user even to come to the library Web site any more.
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