O Holy Shopping Day, Further Thoughts on Yahoo-See-El-See, and Cats in Casts

We’re about to head out on our annual shopping day excursion to San Francisco (we notoriously never actually buy anything; we just have a nice ladies’ lunch, enjoy the holiday window displays, and make fun of the overpriced clothes in Needless Markups).

But I cannot leave the house without commenting that with respect to my conclusions about the Yahoo OCLC Toolbar, aka Yahoo-See-El-See, aka Yahoo Has a Big O, LiB is misreading me a twee, though whose fault is that? Mine, I am sure.

I’m not dismissing the potential value of the Yahoo OCLC Toolbar. As you can tell from the title of my review, Gimpy but Interesting, I think it’s a fascinating concept, and kudos to the Big O for coming up with it. I don’t think the Big O intended for us to embrace Yahoo-See-El-See as a fully-functional product. I believe it was rolled out so we’d talk about it, think about it, and look at library services through fresh eyes.

It doesn’t matter if I, as a librarian, would ever use the toolbar; well, it does a little, since early adopters are important, but even more important is whether our users would benefit from such a tool, not in its current iteration, with its annoying but ultimately trivial configuration issues, but in the broader sense, as an improvement on the ghettoized access to information we now offer. There’s a reason we call it the online public access catalog. Where is the public? Are they flocking to library websites? Are they rushing to your ILS? To your “online databases?” Or are they in Yahoo and Google? I rest my case, at least for one major shopping day.

Also, with a tool such as the Yahoo OCLC toolbar out in the wild, you better pay attention. If your users find it before you do, they might be mislead. Hitch up your britches and get to this tool before they do.

Finally, Yahoo-See-El-See gives us much to ponder with respect to a FRBR-ized view of the information universe. We need to embrace, grapple with, ponder, and critiqueu every chance we have to see FRBR in action. At heart, a FRBR-ized view is how a catalog is meant to be. FRBR corrects the errors–yes, errors–that crept into our conceptual model of information organization when we allowed the OPAC display to be balkanized into a series of edition and format displays. FRBR has fidelity to the unified view of information, the “points of access” model, so eloquently and fervently championed by such great librarian theorists as Seymour Lubetsky.

Last thought on Yahoo, FRBR, and all that before I don comfortable shoes, grab tote bags, and head for The City: the Big O ought to ask if everyone really wants yet another toolbar on their browser, or if there isn’t some new and fresh way to make it easy to use this service. I now have five toolbars competing for attention, and this morning, in attempting to Google up something related to the Big O, I found myself entering information in the Merriam Online Dictionary. Crowded real estate fer shure.

Finally, my love to Art, a cat I met at Thanksgiving dinner who is recovering from an unfortunate encounter with an automobile. Art lost his tail and has a cast on one leg. When he walked over to greet me, his little legs went pad, thunk, pad thunk. Best to you, Art!