Dreams, Devices, Niches, and Edges: Coping with the Changing Landscape of Information Technology

Reflects on changes in information technology and current and possible future trends. Topics discussed include technological innovations and their chances for success; information technology devices; finding market niches; and implications for libraries, including the future of print books and projections of electronic access and publishing

Public-Access Provocations: An Informal Column

It's all well and good to blather on about refinements and extensions to online catalogs. More power to those providing full-text access and adding retrieval for visual materials and sound. Good access to non-textual material is a vital part of modern library catalogs

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Provides several examples of drawbacks encountered when technological improvements are applied to the public access of library databases. Suggests that technological advances all carry some trade-off and that they should be employed cautiously

Help!

Your patron access systems probably have help screens available at the touch of a key. There are dozens--maybe even hundreds--of carefully-worded context-sensitive messages to help the frustrated patron. Some systems even incorporate the patron's problematic command into the help text. How often do those help screens get used? If you're typical, not very often. From what I've heard informally, systems with logging facilities show that help functions are so rarely used that, if they were indexes, they would be prime candidates for removal from the system. Not only in patron access systems, but in most interactive software, even the most superbly-crafted help facilities go unused--even while they could solve most problems that users face