In message <[log in to unmask]> on Tue, 30 Jan
2001, Ann Lees <[log in to unmask]> wrote
>Dear lis-linkers
>In case you don't spot it in the national press - the long awaited
>new online catalogue of the British Library Collections is now
>available at
>http://blpc.bl.uk/
I've tried this out and, despite what other people have said, didn't
find it significantly slower than other catalogues of large libraries.
Some immediate impressions:
Good:
1. It uses the full width of the screen or window, and is not limited to
the left-hand 800 pixels like so many sites that use fixed widths.
2. It is possible to search across all catalogues at once.
Not so good:
1. The advanced search screen is a bit like a crossword to fill in, with
the number of terms restricted to six and awkward restrictions on the
ways in which they can be combined - I doubt if people will be able to
work out the effect of the drop-down Boolean boxes in many cases. It's
unfortunate that they did not give us a free-text box as a
"professional" interface into which we could enter any Boolean
combination with parentheses and field indicators as required. Perhaps
that can be added later...
2. There is an option to search by "subject" but no indication of what
fields this searches. There is a warning that subject indexing is
inconsistent, for understandable historical reasons, but no option to
search for text words in "subject and title together", or "anywhere in
the record". It is therefore difficult to know what a search has covered
and whether it has to be repeated, first for "subject" and then for
"title".
3. There is no information on how to search for ranges of dates.
Leonard Will
--
Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 7BQ, UK. Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 0094
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