Creating systems that support unmediated discovery is a complex undertaking. Some of the areas involved are user needs analysis, understanding user search strategies, search term selection and query formation, mapping a user’s terms to indexed terms, and architecture and design of the user interface. Some of the environmental issues that make this area of endeavor challenging are a) different users approach information discovery using radically differing strategies, b) language is inherently imprecise, e.g., one word can represent multiple concepts and one concept can be represented by multiple words, and c) there are never enough resources (staff time, money) to create exhaustive metadata for even a fraction of the new information objects created every day.
An additional challenge is the evolution in user expectations with the introduction of the Web and Google-like search engines. These advanced search engines provide instant and often adequate responses for many types of user needs. The assumption on the part of users, then, is that they will provide effective responses for all their information needs. The needs of scholars and researchers, however, are often not adequately addressed by Google and similar search engines. They are normally very effective at finding a few good exemplars on a given topic, but fail in providing a more comprehensive result set needed by scholars. One of the challenges in this area of librarianship, therefore, is providing systems which better support the needs of scholars, while offering initial entry within a user’s normal work flow, i.e., often via Google and similar search engines.
After a career in cryptology in the U.S. Navy, I completed my graduate studies at University of Washington in 1997. I served as the senior librarian for the MARS Authority Control Service at WLN, later OCLC (1997-2004). I then worked as the Database Quality Coordinator & Authorities Librarian at the University of Virginia (2004-2006). I now serve as Head of Cataloging & Integrated Systems Librarian at Western Washington University since 2006.