I've got a slightly different take on this, based on experience from
the world of gallery exhibits.
We created a exhibit with a sophisticated glossary system in which
all glossary words were underlined in the main text. Touching the
word brought up a definition. When we did visitor research we found two things.
1) Visitors didn't access the definitions. Mainly this was because
they didn't want to be distracted from what they were doing, but
there was also some concern that the definitions weren't very helpful
or might take them off to another part of the exhibit.
2) Staff writing text with a glossary feature didn't have the same
incentive to write clear text which was appropriate for their
audience because they could always add words to the glossary.
For future exhibits we came up with a compromise, rather than having
underlined words we allowed a maximum of two "glossary buttons" per
page which are labelled something like "What is a XXX?". This gives
the visitor a clearer idea of what the glossary does and constrains
the original writer to only using two "glossary words" per page.
I appreciate the situation is different on the web - visitors are
much less casual and more goal focused - they're much more likely to
have a main goal of finding out what those words really do mean.
However its still important to see the glossary as a tool to help the
user rather than the person writing the text.
I would be interested if people could nominate sites where they as a
user have found the glossary useful. I can start with a bad example.
HM Revenue & Customs
(<http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/>http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/) has an awful
glossary system - its no help at all, not necessarily because of the
technical implementation, more the information it gives.
Cheers
Joe
Joe Cutting
Digital exhibits and installations
www.joecutting.com
35 Hospital Fields Road, York, YO10 4DZ
01904 624681
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