I did my first shift yesterday, what follows are some brief observations on the types of questions I answered:

• I helped a community user scan a bunch of stuff into PDF. Luckily, I attended a session on this just the week before, since every scanner and associated software is different.
• I tried to help a user print a PDF 6 per sheet. I didn’t really succeed here, because although I did figure out the 6 per sheet and duplexing functions, I couldn’t get it oriented the way the patron wanted. Frustratingly, there was no way to preview your print, so the only way to test it was to actually print out the pages, which the user had to pay for. I need to check out the printer functions a bit more in depth.
• I directed a girl to the public library (and told her what she’d need for a card) to find some audio books to listen to during an evening job. Learned that our library doesn’t carry audio books. Also, used Tina Fey’s “Bossy Pants” as my illustrative audio book when demonstrating the pub lib’s search, and explained that she could place a hold on items to get them transferred to the downtown branch. I may have nerded out a bit here.
• Helped a woman over the phone who was mistakenly told by a department secretary that she should have access to our online resources when she didn’t. Had to ask my desk partner about this one, who knew all the ins and outs of who would have access and who would not.
• Helped a woman use worldcat to find the correct edition of a book she was looking for, which she then submitted as an ILL order.
• Helped two students look up their textbooks in the catalog. In general, we don’t carry them, but I did find one. I told them to check the public library too. (A side note, I was able to get away with this a lot in library school, but only because the books I needed weren’t your traditional change every two year text books, but rather specific books written once on a topic.)
• I answered a few questions that, looking back, I should have done more explanation of how I did it (go to this page, click here, etc) rather than just handing them the information. Something to work on next time.
• Learned not to schedule a meeting for directly after my reference shift. I was in the middle of helping someone when the shift ended, and was late for the meeting.

All in all, I had a pretty good time, despite being pretty nervous (“what if I don’t know the answer to any of the questions???”). It brought to mind the best of my retail days, when I felt I was helping people out, with the added bonus of not being chastised for not “upselling” a product.

This week was a weird one- I had very few meetings and could concentrate mostly on one project. Of course, I could do that because I’ve spent the last two weeks squaring other things away so that I could concentrate on one thing this week. It has taken me a while to realize it, but I get so much more done when I can work on the same thing from hour to hour and from day to day. Interruptions happen, but I have begun to minimize them as best I can.

Monday I spent a bit of time working on email and doing hours. Since I have to report my time for various grants I am written into and I’m often not all that clear on which projects I’ll end up having to report my time on, I just go ahead and try to keep track of my time for everything. This has the advantage of being able to generate neat graphs about where I spent my time. The disadvantage is, it takes a lot of time. I met with the director of the Center, who updated me on what was discussed at the on site meeting in Cody, Wyoming she and a few co-workers went to the previous week. We set another meeting for the next day to talk about it in more detail.

Then I got started on my main task for the week: designing the search for the Cody Archive (the aforementioned BIG PROJECT). Designing the search consists of: deciding what will be searched (this has been determined over several weeks of back and forth with the rest of the team) making sure the TEI encoding can support the search they want (which is why I like being in on the TEI early in the development of the project), actually designing the form people will use, designing the results people will see, and doing a bunch of XSL work to get the indexing in SOLR correct. Also some other things. It’s a big time commitment, but a beautiful search is a joy to behold.

I was pretty sure I understood what they wanted to be able to search, so I hustled and redesigned my existing try into one that would: have a basic and advanced search, include more categories, and be more thoughtfully laid out. Most of the work I did Monday was scribbling ideas on pieces of paper and doing research in the form of looking at other digital libraries/archives and using their advanced search. I do this pretty much every time I do a search, because things change, and different features look good in different contexts.

Tuesday, I first wrote the new HTML for the form, as well as a bit of javascript so the basic and advanced forms would be accessible via tabs and we can have nifty auto completing forms for the people and places (thanks to the magic of jQuery UI, this was a snap). Then, I did the CSS. When I get to spend a day or two doing pure HTML/CSS/Javascript work, I am a happy camper. (Note: I have not begun cross browser testing yet.)

I got the form mostly designed by our meeting at two, where I clarified a few details with other team members and asked their advice on a couple of things. After the meeting I consulted with our Metadata Encoding Specialist about the TEI, and met with the programmer. I’ll be handing off the search implementation off to the programmer, so I wanted to make sure it was all understandable. I may have also bugged the project manager a few times for his opinion.

I finished up the CSS for the search form Tuesday afternoon. I still might have a kink or two to work out, but I think it is pretty elegant and usable.

Wednesday, I worked on designing the search results page. First, I mocked up the page in HTML using dummy data. I knew they wanted to include thumbnails of images associated with items (covers of books, scans of newspaper articles, pics of letters), but some items won’t have any images associated with them. I worked on a few versions that showed the images when they were there and nothing when they weren’t, and didn’t like it because the results, to me at least, were hard to scan. So, I created some placeholder icons to be used when the item doesn’t have an image. I only created 5 as a sample, but it took a little bit (2 ish hours) because I was hunting down images and then making the icons so they didn’t just look like another item image. If that even makes sense. Oh, I also created the thumbnails themselves. Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the finished result, but will wait until I hear what the rest of the group thinks before I become too attached.

After writing the HTML I got to – wheeeee – write more CSS! There’s some back and forth in this process… write some base CSS to hold things in place, adjust the HTML as needed, write some more CSS, adjust the HTML as needed, etc. This is why I like doing mockups in CSS/HTML rather than either asking the programmer to do the HTML first and then I style it, or mocking something up in photoshop, which is just… ick to me anymore. When I do the HTML and CSS upfront, it’s a pretty quick job. This way, I know exactly the form the HTML should take, and therefore the programmer will know too. Hopefully.

This process takes most of the day Wed, but I also have a meeting about another project of ours where we try to figure out the quickest way to get around a problem we have been having, and answer a bunch of email.

Thursday I finish up the search form and the results page (just small details) and then get them all working, commit my changes to the SVN repo, update the working site to reflect the changes, send an email for people to take a look. I make printouts of the search and results pages, and my original idea is to hand the programmer notes as to which part of the TEI or Dublin Core should power each of the search fields and the bits and pieces of the results, then I realize it will take much less time if I just write the XSL that will write the XML for the SOLR indexer myself. So I do. This is quite enjoyable as well – it’s the easy part of XSLT, where I can just kind of examine documents and pluck bits and pieces to be indexed. Examples of things we’re pulling out – people, places, keywords, topics, author, type, category, date, figure ID (to show the thumbnail) and a bunch of other stuff I am forgetting. I consult with the metadata person again a few times to make sure I’ll be pulling the correct parts of the TEI. The images are encoded in Dublin Core XML, exported for the most part from content DM, so I write the part to grab that metadata too.

I commit my new XSL, and write up an email explaining what I did to the programmer, and I hope it made sense.

Whew. That was a lot of acronyms.

Friday (today) I planned to work on typography for the site (it needs some polish) but then I was hit with death pains of doom Thursday night and stayed home Friday, mostly curled on the couch. Called my Dr., who said to go to urgent care if it continued. Around three I felt a little better, so decided to write this thing up. Since I still feel crappy, won’t be going out, so I might just work on typography tonight. Wild Friday Night!

Bruce Lawson was a great presenter, and is the author of Introducing HTML5

Much of the world is not using smart browsers, they are using browsers for their feature phones. Opera mini is a popular browser on feature phones around the world.

Radically different places access the same information.

People say mobile users are task focused- this is half true. Everyone is task focused. You don’t need a separate mobile site, just consider your content.

Three ways to handle mobile users:

1. Special mobile site
   • Almost always not the right way, but sometimes the quickest cheapest way.
   • You do not know what the user wants. If you do provide a separate mobile site, provide a way to get out!
   • No browser sniffing! – you can’t detect everything, browsers can lie.
2. Do nothing, serve up the same site to mobile and desktop
   • Use web standards
   • You can use new javascript methods, touchstart, touchmove, listen to touch events in addition to click.
   • CSS3/ graceful degradation
   • HTML5 – useful for webapps
   • Canvas/SVG – consider carefully, use SVG when possible. Canvas obscures information, SVG is more accessible. Don’t use canvas for UI elements. SVG can keep a DOM, so you can query/undo if necessary.
   • Geolocation – use for progressive enhancement, you won’t always have it available
   • HTML5 forms – < input type=”email” > other types, url, tel. These will give a different keyboard for input on the iphone, and they gracefully degrade.
   • Offline support – detect state, save the day by using local/session storage. Way easier than storing in cookies.
   • Web socket communication – sending information this way saves battery life
3. Optimise for Mobile
   • CSS Media queries – making sites that respond. “Can you do this?” “What’s your DPI?” “Landscape or portrait?” Responsive web development. See mediaqueri.es.
   • If you are using media queries, set the viewport.
   • Content should take center stage!
   • Give dimensions of images in HTMl. This makes sure the content doesn’t move after the images are downloaded, which can be annoying – especially for mobile users, because the content they were reading may get pushed off the screen.
   • Consider < a href=”tel:555.555.5555″ > because this will let phone users dial easily.
   • Make accessibility a priority. Follow accessibility guidelines.
   • Minimise HTTP requests. Combine CSS and javascript whenever possible. Use SVG or canvas for images if possible.
   • ems rather than pixels – pixels can fail on high resolution screens
   • fluid layouts
   • use CSS background-size property
   • turn off fancy backgrounds, shadows, etc. for mobile devices (using media queries) – they require processing power and are battery killers
   • Occasional use of data URL’s can be useful
   • Put javascript at the bottom of the page, or, if it must be in the head, put it after CSS so you don’t get a page flash
   • Use feature detection js like Modernizr

No web apps! laziness is wise

Widgets – zip file containing web standard goodness – uses the browser platform. Gives you a downloadable app, uses the browser widget engine, but has no chrome – installation through the start menu.

Of course, you can only get certain things through a native app. Access to the camera and mic, for instance. Soon, though, you will be able to do things comparable to what you can do with a native app – access things like: contacts, calendar, media, messaging, accelerometer. HTML5 < device > – access to camera and microphone in a specific device.

Lawson demonstrated an experimental app which detects where you are, your direction, and your speed, all in the browser.

Grids make sense of the world. Paper size – A1-A6 paper size system, each smaller size is half of the last.

The Grid = Harmony

The grid helps the user predict where the new information they seek will be found.

The simpler the grid, the more effective it is.

Steps in the design process:

• Research
  • Understand the constraints
• Wireframes or another activity that helps you figure out functionality and build agreement on whet needs to be to be built.
• Preparatory design Sketches, calculations, page sketches
  • Sketch throughout the project.
  • Problem solving should come before the aesthetics.
• Visual Design
• Code

On the golden rectangle

It is sometimes useful to divide things by 1.618, but in practice Vinh has never seen someone use the golden rectangle extensively when designing a website. The rule of thirds is more important.

Constructing the grid

• A viewport of 960×650 is still a good size to shoot for. (This talk focused on a fixed grid).
• Units in multiples of 8 are useful. People are most comfortable processing between 60 and 80 characters per line, so keep this in mind when laying out page.
• The grid is about constraint, and adding constraint can help with design.
• Use the grid to design a stream of information.

Responsive web design is really good, but a little showy. What is really important is satisfying what the user expects. What they want is access and speed, usefulness, and great content.

This session was sadly under attended. Majora Carter is an inspirational and upbeat speaker, and well worth seeing. I talked to some people afterwards who had purchased the SXSW ticket and drove from Houston just to see her talk!

You can see a couple of Majora Carter’s talks at TED.com, including her widely viewed talk on “Greening the Ghetto.”

You don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one

The first part of the talk was bio information, read more at Majora Carter’s wikipedia page.

Carter grew up and lived in the Bronx, freeways were built over thriving working class communities. Red lining – red lines were built around area code no one would invest in. Landlords found it more profitable to burn their buildings than improve. This created something like a war zone. Carter’s brother Lenny spent two tours in Vietnam only to be gunned down in a nearby neighborhood. New York decides to place a sewage treatment plant in the area which would process 60% of NY’s sewage. Wealthier and largely white neighborhoods pushing onto the poorer ones. Young people who live near fossil fuel emissions are impacted – suffer learning disabilities.

The lower income neighborhood was targeted, because they had no political power or influence.

How do you create a more sustainable solid waste process?

What Majora has done

• Started the first green roof company run by a community organization
  • Working with plants reduces stress levels- plants require patience
• created the apparatus to create the kinds of jobs the community needed

Created Home(town) Security

Homeland security is about fear. Home(town) security is not based on fear.

People want to see things happen in their own home towns.

People see development and all they see is gentrification. How will they afford the change? (Karin’s note – I think the difference here is whether the change comes from inside or outside – gentrification is led by outside developers, productive neighborhood development comes from community initiative and involvement.)

Several examples:

In syracuse, the mayor put in blue lights in the dangerous neighborhoods, but what does that feel like to the people who live there? This is the drama of local community development, and it will make good TV.

Tree People – Andy Lipkus is unpaving paradise

Coal Mountain Watch – Judy Bonds died of cancer from breathing in the toxicity after mountain top removal mining. Worked to turn these areas into wind farms.

I missed a couple of other examples.

Carter saying “I should be advising president obama” was met with applause.

Question: (From AARP representative) – How can we get state offices to fund services which will help older americans stay in their homes – transportation, walkable neighborhoods, etc, instead of packing up and moving to florida?
Answer: The nice thing about older americans is they vote. Livable cities are the kind of thing which will keep people around.

Question: Would grant writing workshops be useful?
Answer: Probably not. There are already community organizations, we don’t need more of them, we need to build up the ones that are there.

Question: How to engage community? Would social media be effective?
Answer: This is one of the reasons to start with community based development, it is easier to build support around. Also, “feed them and they will come.”

Question: (I missed this question!)
Answer: Work a bit by bit, pursue market based solutions. A lot of our tax money is used for social services. If we can turn expensive people receiving social benefits into working taxpayers, everyone wins. Most people want to work.

Question: How to be involved locally when one can’t afford to live local? This is from someone who moved out to the suburbs because he didn’t feel safe raising his children where he lived.
Answer: Community Policing can be very useful. Working with the police to identify areas which could use more foot patrols. Job creation is key as well – sometimes people would rather have a job than sell weed.

Question: How to address criticism that [community development] is not realistic or too idealistic?
Answer: Follow the money. They can’t argue with results. The world has enough pessimists. (karin’s note: And ignore them! Who cares what they say?)

I am working on a series of posts of my notes from SXSW. Interspaced with those will be posts about what I learned in general and the value I see in SXSW.

I took 47 pages of handwritten notes. It’s gonna take a while to type them all up.

I will be headed to SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX next week, the 11th-16th. If you are going and would like to meet up, email me (karin at nirak dot net or nirak on twitter).

I’m pretty excited to go to SXSW, having listened to many of the podcasts and for a couple of years, sans visuals, and following the conversations. I’m sure I will learn a lot, and from what I hear, I will also be staying up way too late.

[awkward segue]

I had a long post written up once (one of many posts I have written which will probably stay in “draft” form) about why libraries should fund conference expenses for staff as well as faculty. I still think that is the case, but recognize that, with budgets being what they are, it probably is difficult to fund faculty travel to conferences right now, let alone staff. However, there is some advantage to paying my own way, which I neglected to mention in that post.

An excerpt from that post, written almost a year ago:

“The employee, and in turn the employer, gets much more from staff attendance at a conference besides continuing education. They get new professional contacts, new ways to solve problems, new resources to check, and, most importantly, an renewed excitement for the work they do. If a conference results in an employee that returns with new excitement and commitment to the work they are doing, everyone benefits.”

The nice thing about paying my own way to conferences (which I have done several times a year), is that since I don’t have to worry about publishing papers or giving presentations, I can choose the conferences that excite me rather than the ones that are likely to advance me towards tenure. I come back to work super exhausted and super excited about the work I am privileged to be able to do. I’m very lucky to have both the money and the available time off to be able to attend conferences.

Not really sure of my point here, except to say WOOO SXSW!!!!!

(Expect a few more awkward blog posts while I get back into this whole blogging thing).

Colors of San Pedro by my hovercraft is full of eels

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur. Various house issues, preparing for vacation and ALA Annual, work, school, and life have been keeping me very busy. All my poor blogs are neglected. :(

I’m not going to post an ALA schedule yet, because I learned last year that it will just change anyway as ALA draws closer. I will probably post a few tentative plans next week, and will hopefully blog some sessions. Of course I will go to the sessions Cory Doctorow is at.

As for social activities, I will go to the Scholarship Bash Saturday night, and then some of us are trekking to San Pedro for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I will go to the Blog Salon and the NMRT Social (I’m sad they’re not in the same hotel this year) most likely.

I’m heading for vacation in California before Annual- so if you are there beforehand too and want to do something, email me (karin@nirak.net.) If you want my cell phone # to contact me during Annual, just email me.

I will likely be posting vacation related stuff to my blog at os-agnostic, so check there if you want to read any of that. I’m also going to bring a painting to LA so I can give away a painting during my trip – hopefully to someone at the conference. It worked well at THATCamp.

I think that’s it. If you’re going to Annual, I’ll see you there, and if not, I hope I don’t annoy you too much with my conference postings and tweets. :)

First, though- the DC area is becoming a favorite destination of mine, even though I have only been here twice now. I spent 5 hours yesterday int he National Gallery of Art, and was, of course, awed the entire time. (The only annoying part was listening to people say ‘why is that art? I could do that!’ over and over. ) Fairfax is lovely, despite the occasional disappearing sidewalks (seems people don’t walk long distances here very often?)

THAT Camp began with a great breakfast and a whole group meeting where we planned out the schedule for the day. Participants posted their presenting ideas to the blog for a couple of weeks leading up to the unconference, so the task was a bit easier.

Session 1 – Art

The first session was a session on art- specifically digital art. There were only two others including me, David Rieder and Susan Harum. We had a great discussion of what digital art might look like and how it might be supported. David and Susan had many, many great links to share, and it was great to hear how other campuses are dealing with the emergence of digital art. I’d love to see more about this topic.

Lunch!

A fantastic lunch was accompanied by Dork Shorts- brief talks on technology topic. Presenters had 5 minutes to show off their site or idea. More good link goodness, although some of the sites were in production and not yet available to the public.

Session 2 – Alternative search

I started the session with a brief slide show that addressed some of the points I’ve made in my recent alternative search postings.

| View | Upload your own

After that, I left it up to the group to talk about what we could do to make search better. I was thrilled that the group contained a number of people with much more experience with search than me, and we talked about technologies, what the users want, and how to make search better. Josh Greenburg brought up the excellent point that some of what we think of as search problems are really user interface problems- so I am looking forward to attending the interface design tomorrow.

One of the developers of Blacklight (Bess Sadler), an open source OPAC enhancement, was there and the work that they have done is absolutely amazing. I particularly liked her ideas for allowing departments to customize search for different disciplines through an easy to use GUI interface. There were a lot of other great links mentioned, which, unfortunately I lost because of an errant keystroke.

Session 3 – Making things

Bill Turkle lead two sessions on the Arduino- I attended the second. I managed to make a light blink and alter a few programs, but what I am really excited about is getting an Arduino. I have never done anything with physical computing or electronics before, so it was a steep learning curve for me. I am the proud new owner of an Arduino, though, and I have several ideas of project I can’t wait to get started with.

Session 4 – Creative Commons/Copyright

I sort of led this session, too, through I felt a bit like an impostor because I am by no means an expert on copyright. I started with a discussion on creative commons, talked about why I use it, and what some of the advantages and disadvantages are. The group talked about some of the copyright issues they have had, and we tried to brainstorm some ways to get around them. I wish I had more answers for the frustrating issue of copyright. I believe in intellectual property, but also share the belief of many that the copyright system as it stands is as much of a hindrance as a help.

One of the frustrations the group expressed was the tendency of institutions to hold back higher resolution images from the web, opting instead to only allow very low resolution images to try and make money by selling higher resolution images. One solid idea we came up with is to try and collect studies that analyze the cost vs benefits of doing this and compile a list of advantages of making higher resolution images available and free to use. I’m going to work on this – I’m wondering if I can make it into an independent study project for school.

Andrea Ferguson talked a little bit about her experiences getting her MFA at the University at the University of South Florida, and I came away much more optimistic about Fine Art in Academia. I have been afraid that digital art was stifled many places, but many conversations have now led me to believe that that just isn’t so. Makes me want to go for an MFA even more.

Recap and dinner

At the end, the group met again and Josh Greenburg made a few final remarks. Then many of us went to dinner at Minerva, a fantastic Indian restaurant here in Fairfax. The dinner and the conversation were excellent.

I look forward to another great day tomorrow, though my brain feels about full already. I have a beautiful walk to CHNM tomorrow in the morning to look forward to, during which I can clear my thoughts.

• Search that uses existing human or computer supplied metadata to find and display information.
• Search that analyzes a documents’ contents to return a result.
• Search that relies on user added metadata

Today, I’m talking about the first technique: using existing metadata in new ways to facilitate finding and browsing. Most files have some metadata attached: the date the file was created, the date it was last altered, the owner’s name, categories, etc. Many scholarly projects have extra metadata associated with it, expertly researched or generated. Library online catalogs also have rich metadata for holdings. Many systems have rich metadata, but don’t use it in a way that helps users to find what they are looking for.

Mapping

One example of using existing metadata to help a user find what they want is mapping technologies. Take crime statistics. Many police departments are now mapping crime data on interactive, online maps. The Lincoln City Police Department is doing just that:

Map of crime provided by the Lincoln, Nebraska Police Department.

Here we have already existing data from the police blotters, which has been accessible for quite some time. In years past, one could find police blotter information in the newspaper, and later these were moved online. While it was nice to have the information, and any citizen could scan the pages to find crime in his or her area, it was very difficult to answer the question “what crimes have taken place within a quarter mile of my house in the last 5 days?” By plotting the already existing information on a map, citizens can keep watch on crime in their area.

The previous example helps the user find the answer to a specific question. Other map based systems help the user browse through materials and form new questions. This is often the case in systems for scholarly research papers. As an example, The Willa Cather Archive has a forthcoming feature which maps Willa Cather’s travels across the globe and links them both to time and to objects which include primarily letters and photos.

Screenshots of Willa Cather Archive production feature. (Feature not yet available.)

Called “Mapping a writer’s world: A Geographic Chronology of Willa Cather’s Life,” this feature allows a Willa Cather scholar to explore the archive’s collections not only through time, but through space as well. This allows the scholar to make connections that would be hard to make otherwise. The time component allows users to be led through Cather’s travels. This new view, a sort of geographic biography, brings a new perspective to Willa Cather’s life and may shatter the stereotype some have of a woman who lived her life on the plains. Similarly, map based views of documents on the site “Envisaging the west: Thomas Jefferson and the roots of Lewis and Clark” help the user find documents in space as well as time, and can help the user put documents together in new ways.

“Envisaging the West” Map view.

Etsy Geolocator.

Browsing by geography is not exclusive to scholarly works and crime maps. The commercial website Etsy, where users can buy and sell handmade goods, has several different search and browse methods, one of which will to let you find items on a map. This feature may not help you find a specific item, but it can help you find items made in your own city, therefore supporting your local economy. The geography feature has the added feature of helping sellers find local, dedicated buyers, who can support a small business.

Time

Another kind of existing metadata that can be used to make finding and browsing easier is time. Most objects have some kind of time identifier- either a time stamp added by a computer or recording device (for example, most cameras automatically imprint the time a shot was taken in the metadata) or the date something was created, added later by a scholar.

Mechanically added time stamps are marginally useful for historic objects, but for newer, born digital objects they can be very useful. For example, the aforementioned website Etsy provides another way of browsing items by sorting them by the most recently listed. This could be done through a simple list of items, but Etsy has added a 3-D component and an analog style clock that helps the user browse the items. A photo program called Picasa (offered by Google) sorts photos by date taken in the default view, offering the user a long list of chronologically ordered photos. This view depends on embedded metadata and depends not on the filename or title of a shot, but metadata associated with an object.

Etsy Time Machine.

Many documents have a date associated with them that indicate when the item was created. For instance, Zotero, a scholarly citation management system, has a field for “date” where the date of an object can be entered. If the date is not supplied in the metadata, the user can add this information. This allows for a new way to view one’s collected resources: a timeline.

Zotero timeline, showing highlighted words. The Zotero timeline was created with the help of MIT’s SIMILE project.

The timeline interface also allows users to highlight items containing certain words, which lets the user do a quick check on their own sources to answer questions such as “did scholars stop using a certain term after the turn of the century?” This kind of question would be difficult to answer given the traditional list view. Another scholarly example of mapping existing metadata to a timeline is found in the Envisaging the West website, where documents have been mapped to a timeline and color coded. This allows the user to see at a glance where documents fall on the timeline and what types occurred when.

Envisaging the West timeline view.

Faceted Browsing

A final way that existing metadata might be used is to create a method for drilling down through results via faceted browsing. With this method, information about each item is extracted and offered to the viewer so they can navigate through results with ease. Faceted browsing helps both browsing and finding: the rich metadata offers otherwise new paths to follow, and can also assist in finding a specific item by breaking aspects into categories. A few examples of these systems include a library catalog which uses extensive metadata to allow a user to navigate through items, (See McMaster University Library catalog, below), or a shopping site that allows a user to set a number of controls to find exactly the item they want (See screenshots of Buzzillions and Volkswagen UK sites, below).

McMaster University catalog, powered by Endeca.

Buzzillions website, also powered by Endeca. (via Peter Morville’s Flickr Stream)

Volkswagen UK site. Users can move the sliders to control what cars are shown. (via Peter Morville’s Flickr Stream)

Tomorrow I will explore search that nalyzes a documents’ contents to return results.