Selection Criteria and Information Resources

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Oct 26

In looking over the RSS feeds this morning, I noted an entry from the Law Librarian Blog relating to the usability of a particular information resource (see The Witches Brew that is...). The librarian wasn't too pleased with the system, specifically noting that "The way too Google-ish inspired structure is accompanied by a decent set of SE filtering tools to mitigate some of the design flaws but, OMG, good luck getting a handle on how to use them and then, more importantly, on training others in their use so you aren't the only person on-site sufficiently skilled to perform effective...searches."

In this instance, the librarian felt that other competitive vendors were doing a better job at providing a usable service, albeit at a higher price, pointing out, "...dollar for dollar (Vendor A)'s editorial quality in labor and employment law far surpasses Vendor B. In addition to editorial content, (Vendor A)'s organization of all online content, SE, and website-like interface for its self-hosted services are so user friendly that patrons "get it" with a minimal amount of librarian assistance."

The take-away from that entry for vendors should be that librarians don't always go for the cheaper information resource, even in stringent times. They seek out an appropriate combination of quality content, quality indexing, usability and pricing (even if, as this entry suggests, the ultimate selection offers a slightly less high-tech service than its competitor). Re-engineer legacy product accordingly.