1. Gaining Weight for Good Reason:
Analysis of Fuller Bibliographic Records in Supporting
Keyword Search
Lisa Zhao
Assistant Catalog Librarian
Clinical Associate Professor
Catalog Dept.
Daley Library
Univ. of ILL at Chicago

2. An Overview
Reality:
Library users turn to search engines as their first choice for
seeking information.
Analysis:
Very often, users cannot find some resources from the library
online catalog that even the library has when search by their
own words.
Consequence:
- Many library materials consequently become “hidden
items,” left on the shelf not being used, faces being weeded;
- Library loses users.
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3. Users’ Search Behavior
“People describe things differently, so it is up
to the searcher to use multiple terms and
phrases, to search creatively, and to recognize
the importance of context. Traditional
searching used controlled vocabularies and
human assigned thesauri. The buzzword today
is folksonomies, or uncontrolled vocabularies.”
Ojala, Marydee: Changes in Search Behavior, Online, v.31: issue 1,
Jan/Feb, 2007, p.14-15.
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4. Words in Nowadays
In physical environments, size, shape, color,
and location set objects apart.
In the digital realm, we rely heavily on words,
words as labels, words as links.
Morville, Peter: Ambient Findability, 2005
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5. Words in Nowadays
“As a vital ingredient in the online search
process, keywords have become part of our
everyday experience. We feed keywords into
Google, Yahoo!, MSN, eBay, and Amazon. We
search for news, products, people, used
furniture, and music. And words are the key
our success.”
Morville, Peter: Ambient Findability, 2005
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6. Special Words (or Jargons)
The rare terms occur infrequently, but when
they do occur they are likely to be crucial to
what is being said, and the reader might well
want to look them up. “… the words we ignore
for the purposes of the exercise may be very
rare, but in context they may be very
important.”
Facts about the language, AskOxford.com:
http://www.askoxford.com/oec/mainpage/oec02/?view=uk
(April. 12, 2010 accessed)
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7. Comparison:
Search in Library Online Catalog - Search Engine
Information searchers
Search engine’s interface Library online catalog
interface
Full-text Contents of the Bibliographic Records
online works
?
A B
Input by millions of Input by a few catalogers
authors in each institution
Full-text Contents of
works (print + ER)
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8. Case Studies I
Stokstad, Marilyn: Art History. Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Pearson Education, 3rd edition,
2008.
- Bibliographic content
- How much we missed
- The effect
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9. Case Studies II
Wonders of the world as seen and described by
great writers, collected and edited by Esther
Singleton, New York: Dodd, Mead & company,
1912.
- Bibliographic content
- How much we missed
- The effect
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10. Case Studies III
Chen, Tian-Quan. Non-equilibrium statistical
mechanics: without the assumption of molecular
chaos. River Edge, N.J.: World Scientific, c2003.
- Bibliographic content
- How much we missed
- Result
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11. Case Studies IV
E-book: Advanced formal verification, edited by
Rolf Drechsler. Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, c2004.
- Bibliographic content
- How much we missed
- Result
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12. Conclusion
- To date, bibliographic records have NOT
adequately reflected the rich content of library
resources and met users’ need in the web
environment as well.
- Countless library resources are poorly represented
by UNDERNOURISHED bibliographic records.
Therefore, these resources have little chance to be
found by the search beyond standard bibliographic
access points in the library online catalog.
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13. Suggestion
 Make bibliographic control dynamic
 Adding TOCs into bibliographic records
 Original catalogers should take responsibility
 Change the link to the TOC in a bibliographic record
into the real content
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14. Final Word
Libraries have been collecting records of human
civilization and knowledge for centuries. These contents
are not easily replaceable by or findable from the
current online content in a short time. We have
responsibility to present them to our users.
A genie—library collections—has been locked in its small
lamp—the traditional bibliographic record—not easily
discovered for centuries. Once we release it from the lamp,
it will reveal the power of library collections.
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