Mar
Laura at the Llyfrgellydd blog rants about library technology. And, she takes no hostages. “Multiple systems, or at the very least, the appearance of multiple systems, are enemies to usability” is Laura’s first lob. Oh goodie, she’s going to have something nice to say about federated search, right, since hiding those multiple systems are friends to usability? Not a chance.
I think one of the reasons federated search doesn’t work is because the metadata is coming from so many different sources that it just can’t be translated consistently. It seems a huge waste of time that vendors have people working on connectors to read that metadata and parse it.
I didn’t realize that federated search doesn’t work. I assume Laura is writing about the metadata like title, author, and snippet that forms the search results pages. Yes, consistency isn’t perfect but it’s not nearly as bad as Laura pronounces.
Kidding aside, go read Laura’s article. You’ll get the perspective of a “past life” (her words) reference librarian who has many bones to pick with library technology. It’s good market research material.
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Tags: federated search
One Response to "Laura rants about library technology"
March 17th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Perhaps if you are curious about what Laura means, you should ask Laura? I didn’t see your name in her comment section.
Sneering at her only makes you look arrogant and out-of-touch. I can only assume this is not your preference.