Re: FAST and GRIS
Michael Bernstein <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.infodesign.facetedclassification |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Karl Fast wrote: > > What bothers me is that in less than a decade, Amazon has > built--from scratch--a vastly superior information retrieval system > than anything libraries have achieved. This is something we've been > working on for decades. > > We are getting beat at our own game on our home turf, and beaten > badly. It's embarrassing. I think it's worth noting that Amazon has at least a few fundamental advantages regarding book-information search and retreival: - Practically everything in their book catalog has an ISBN, and individual copies are essentially fungible (multiple copies are then an inventory problem). Neither of these is true for a large subset of library holdings. - Amazon is operating in an environment where simplicity trumps nearly all other considerations. While the result is much more than 'good enough' for the purpose (consumer self-service), I doubt that any search system that lacked even boolean operators would be acceptable to LIS professionals. The latter point in particular is worth noting. Amazon as an application has many powerful features, but almost none of them are 'power-user' features, which is where (for the most part) LIS R&D is focused and the resulting UIs reflect this. - Michael Bernstein ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/0bmwlB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ---------- Thanks for playing. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/