OPACs and IA
I’m irked at the Post Office for tearing the cover of my copy of the latest Information Technology and Libraries (23:4, December 2004, and yes, it seems a bit late to me too), because I actually want to keep this one, and I don’t normally keep periodicals. (Storage space. You know how it is. The library’s got it; that’s good enough for me.)
There’s a poorly-written but fascinating article on whether computer anxiety and library anxiety correlate. (Don’t miss the last few paragraphs. Some surprises there, at least for me.) A well-written and well-argued piece on the problems of information architecture for library websites had me cheering aloud, if nothing else for the way the authors were framing the issues. (Loved the bit on ILL. Loved it. Yes, yes, yes, send the cite to ILL automagically!) The Lessig Free Culture review by Karen Coyle was chatty, thoughtful, and smart.
And, OPAC fans and non-, there’s “The Impact of Web Search Engines on Subject Searching in OPAC,” which in addition to the yumminess of the subject matter (me and my OPAC thing, yeah, I know) has a very tasty bibliography of things I simply must get and read now.
I’ve only got time to skim the rest at the moment—packing and other things to do still—but I expect it’ll come with me on the plane tomorrow. Very good stuff. Dorothea-Bob says check it out.