MJG writes: Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Strategist of OCLC Research, discusses the evolution of library searches in the “web 2.0” environment:
We seem to have turned a corner with library search. For example, one of the strategic priorities for the British Library is to ‘transform search and navigation’ in support of access to their collections, although there is little detail about what will be attempted. There has been significant recent discussion about catalog search and the deficiencies of current approaches, with some recent emphasis on the UC study and on the NCSU catalog. There has also been a growing interest in placing search at the point of need, reaching into user environments in various ways (for example by placing subject-specific metasearch bundles in course pages), or by opening up search APIs. And, we are beginning to discuss how to mobilize the edge with collaborative bookmarking, tagging and so on. The orginal Long Tail discussion noted that ‘navigation’ would be increasingly important in large databases, and I touched on this when talking about the long tail and libraries.
What is most interesting, as Mr. Dempsey notes, is that these emerging search patterns (e.g., syndication, recommendation, and tagging) are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are increasingly being combined to construct novel and dynamic ways of finding and making sense of information.
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