Capitalizing on Information Organization and Information Visualization for a New-Generation Catalogue

Subject searching is difficult with traditional text-based online public access library catalogues (OPACs), and the next-generation discovery layers are keyword searching and result filtering tools that offer little support for subject browsing. Next-generation OPACs ignore the rich network of relat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Library trends 2012-07, Vol.61 (1), p.149-161
Main Authors: Julien, Charles-Antoine, Guastavino, Catherine, Bouthillier, France
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Libraries
Bibliographic Databases
Browsing
Classification
Computer Simulation
Congressional investigations
Controlled vocabulary
Information retrieval
Library collections
Metaphor
Online catalogues
Online Searching
Prototypes
Public access
Semantics
Virtual reality
Visualization
Websites
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Summary:Subject searching is difficult with traditional text-based online public access library catalogues (OPACs), and the next-generation discovery layers are keyword searching and result filtering tools that offer little support for subject browsing. Next-generation OPACs ignore the rich network of relations offered by controlled subject vocabulary, which can facilitate subject browsing. A new generation of OPACs could leverage existing information-organization investments and offer online searchers a novel browsing and searching environment. This is a case study of the design and development of a virtual reality subject browsing and information retrieval tool. The functional prototype shows that the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) can be shaped into a useful and usable tree structure serving as a visual metaphor that contains a real world collection from the domain of science and engineering. Formative tests show that users can effectively browse the LCSH tree and carve it up based on their keyword search queries. This study uses a complex information-organization structure as a defining characteristic of an OPAC that goes beyond the standard keyword search model, toward the cutting edge of online search tools.
ISSN:0024-2594
1559-0682
1559-0682
DOI:10.1353/lib.2012.0022