Review of recent D-Lib article
Yasmin, a student at my alma mater the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, has posted a good review of the recent D-Lib article, Hierarchical Catalog Records: Implementing a FRBR Catalog.
There are, however, a number of shortcomings in the article. Although the Perseus Digital Library was presented as an “ideal testbed for research on FRBR” (p.3), there was no discussion of actual users’ experience with the system thus far. The article could have been strengthened if some user feedback (apart from the authors’ experience) had been included, or if the authors had indicated that at this point there was no usability testing or if any such testing is envisaged in the near future. User feedback is important in actually identifying any issues with retrieval or access in a hierarchical catalog.
Some of the criticisms can be countered by noting that D-Lib takes shortish papers and the authors perhaps didn’t have room to explain some things in detail.