Visual Catalog

Information Visualization:

Innovative Practices to Connect Every Book, Its Reader

[This is a survey about advances in content management for creating visual catalogs]

by Mohamed Taher

My Visual Resume

To comment on this subject go to: InfoVis:Wiki

Best practices Alternative Cataloging Innovative Approaches Visual Catalogue Amazon.com's Approach Ranganathan's Five Laws

Best practices:

• @ Fairfield Public Library, Fairfield, CT.

The How-To Manual That Anyone Can Write or Edit

Alternative Cataloging:

• Alternative Cataloging best practice as explained by Sanford Berman, Also see here Google Print interface depicting book content
  • About Sandford Berman, Former Head Cataloger, Hennepin County Library, Minnetonka, Minnesota [see also here] -- See also: Sanford Berman, The Passionate Cataloger
  • Alternative Cataloging @ Google
  • Sample entry for cataloging Web resources (modified Dublin Core format)
  • Cataloguing beyond the walls: APLA 1997
• TrackER system for electronic resources, A Powerpoint presentation
  • Digital Tables of Contents (TOC) Project: The Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT)
  • Blackwell's Book Services - Table of Contents Enrichment Service
  • A new catalogue interface
  • Full text is coming... OPAC is going?
  • How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It),by Karen G. Schneider
  • How OPACs Suck, Part 2: The Checklist of Shame, by Karen G. Schneider
  • How OPACs Suck, Part 3: The Big Picture, by Karen G. Schneider
• Open WorldCat program: a worldwide library cooperative

Innovative Approaches

• OPAC as a tool for user tagging? by Sukhdev Singh [He is quoting: ALA TechSource | Mulled Whine ]
• LIVA: Library systems Information Visualization and Analysis
• Information Visualisation
• Recommended Graphic Novels for Public Libraries
• The Weakest Link: Library Catalogs, by Terrence E. Young, Jr. The Book Report, January/February 2002
• Information Wants To Be Free, The Failure of Middleware, Part 1: What’s the Problem?
• Graphic History Browser
• Text Catalogs [includes worldwide Book Lists and Bibliographies]
• One Book Community Reading Programs
• Querying, Navigating and Visualizing an Online Library Catalog, by Aravindan Veerasamy, Scott Hudson, Shamkant Navathe
  • Abstract: We describe the design of an User Interface for a ranked output Information Retrieval system that integrates querying, navigation and visualization in a seamless fashion. Highlights of the system include the following: Using a visualization scheme, the interface provides visual feedback to the user about how the query words influence the ranking of retrieved documents. By simple drag-and-drop operations of objects on the screen, the interface facilitates a naive end-user in...
  • Information Visualization Bibliography
• Information Visualization Interfaces for Retrieval and Analysis (IVIRA) Workshop Summary, Javed Mostafa, and Katy Börner
• Google Scholar Support for Libraries
  • To have your library included as a part of the 'Library Search' link, you will need to join the OCLC Open Worldcat program
• Book Exposure in Libraries
  • By systematically exposing books by their covers the library acts as a catalyst to impulsive measures by those who do not have a prepared query for the staff at the information counter. Consequently, acts of serendipity will take place. The majority of readers of fiction, including those who read a lot, often look to act upon a whim or be recommended a title. There is a rule of thumb in the book trade that states 50% spines and 50% covers.
• Content Visualization in a Digital Music Library

Visual Catalogue:

• What is a Visual Catalogue?
  • "Current library catalogs don't reflect how people really work with information, making them very inefficient tools, particularly for users new to a discipline. They represent monolithic centralized efforts to structure access to the written record that are failing to adequately address the growth of that record or to tightly integrate newer forms of scholarly communication (e.g. the Web)."

The OPAC of the future should have the following characteristics: The catalog needs to provide its users with grounding in fields that are new to them. It should offer both visualizations of the collection and of scholarly activity using the collection. It should support subjective queries and be able to handle a natural language dialog. Over time it should develop personal profiles of its users and tailor its responses to better meet their needs. It should help them to get into contact with one another and to update the overall store of knowledge to manage errata and incomplete leads. It should be designed to be able to function as a distributed system. It should have at its highest levels, an object oriented systems architecture to promote well factored extensibility." More...

• A Portal: Information Visualization Resources
  • Subject World: A System for Visualizing OPAC, Proceedings of PNC Annual Conference and Joint Meetings 2002, 22 September, 2002 [pdf] full text
  • More Visualization
  • see another sample

Amazon.com's Approach:

• Amazon.com is New Fulfillment Partner in the Open WorldCat Program
• Amazon.com has joined Baker & Taylor as a fulfillment partner within the Open WorldCat program to facilitate the online purchase of books identified through WorldCat. Now, Web searchers who reach WorldCat from popular search engines or other Web resources may use a book buying link to purchase books through Amazon.com, in addition to the initial pilot partner, Baker & Taylor.
• This component of the Open WorldCat program not only connects Web searchers with the materials they need; it also delivers a financial benefit to all libraries that participate in the program. Each time a Web searcher purchases a book through Open WorldCat, a portion of the proceeds supports the ongoing development of Open WorldCat for the benefit of all participating libraries.
• Web searchers reach the Open WorldCat interface from search results in Web search engines or popular Web resources. Users may link directly to Amazon.com from Find in a Library for some items. When a direct link is not available, users will have the option of linking to the Amazon.com site to search for similar items. More at OCLC
  • Amazon: Search Inside the Book The Great Library of Amazonia, By Gary Wolf, Wired.com, Issue 11.12 | December 2003
• Citation links @ Amazon
• Information visualization titles at Amazon
  • I'd like to suggest one possible reason why we let Amazon beat us at our own game of constructing catalogs: we may be too realistic for our own good. ... Amazon could afford to spend millions of dollars on servers and software because they expected to make money doing it, and they got the star-up money up-front from other people who believed they would succeed. We know perfectly well that taxpayers and our administrations wouldn't fork over that kind of money, don't we? ... But who of us would go to our administrations and say, "Give me a few million dollars and I'll produce the ultimate user-friendly catalog that tells people everything they could possibly want to know about any book or video or recording in our library"? Solution: Dream Big, by Marylaine Block, in Net Effects: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet. Edited by Marylaine Block. (Medford NJ., Information Today, 2003): 322-323. [read online: How To Not Be Blind-sided Again @ http://marylaine.com/book
  • ppt Emulating Amazon: what lessons can we learn; what features can we implement, by Jim Robertson, 2006