A Catalog or a Reference Tool? or, MELVYL's Exquisite Search Features You Can't Know until Someone Tells You

This article describes a few of the MELVYL system's search features that are not generally known, even to frequent searchers, so that readers can appreciate haw difficult it is to discover these features without being told. The author postulates that users who view the MELVYL system as a reference tool instead of a catalog are willing to spend more time exploring the advanced system features and are more tolerant of its shortcomings as a library catalog. EXPECTATIONS INFLUENCE ATTITUDES From the perspective of this outsider, a nagging customer, so to speak, who always wants more, better, and quicker, the MELVYL system wins both credits and demerits. I say this as the principal author of the Mynd of MELVYL newsletter (1) (or MOM, for short) from issue number 1, February 16, 1984, through number 51, January 8, 1987. The point of the newsletter was to teach staff how to exploit the MELVYL system's "Command Mode" (the menu-driven "Lookup Mode" was so clunky and inferior that its use was to be discouraged at all costs, and so was rarely mentioned), and in particular to inform staff about the continual flow of significant changes. By definition, to help staff understand what was not obvious about the MELVYL system, or overcome frustrating aspects of the MELVYL system's search features, was to expose its shortcomings as well. Personally, I have more success selling the MELVYL system as reference tool than as an online catalog. Users expect a catalog to reward them quickly. As Walt Crawford says, "if you need to go through seven or eight screens to get to the call number for a single item, you're not serving the majority of your users' needs." (2) The MELVYL system is best considered as a tool for exploring facets of a topic, or to develop bibliographies, or to answer questions based on highly fragmented information. In the MELVYL system, if you are unsure of how to get started or of what you are doing, you may need tojump a few hurdles to get results. The statistical reports showing very low use of the special commands and indexes lead me to conclude that it is mostly people who are paid to use the MELVYL system (e.g., librarians) who take the time to learn the special options, and of those people, only the ones who use the system frequently remember them. The average user wants material easily and quickly, and becomes discouraged by the complexity of the system. It is not as if the MELVYL system is difficult to learn. You can know most of what there is to know simply by reading. The online "help" structure is comprehensive: Nearly 1,000 dear, concise essays are accessible by either typing HELP [term] to get an explanation of the term, or typing just HELP to get a diagnosis of your present situation and options for what to do next. To keep up with system changes and upgrades, you need only type SHOW NEWS, SHOW EXPERIMENTS, and SHOW DLA NEWS. EXPLAIN STATISTICS will give you a lot of information about system use. From my observations, users who expect the MELVYL system to behave like a catalog tend to become impatient with its imperfections and failures. Those who regard it as a reference tool, however, have a more tolerant attitude about its limitations: They are pleased when it produces desired results, and they will try other strategies when it does not. (3) They are more willing to explore the unknowns of the system, posing such questions to themselves as, "I wonder if the system will allow me to do this? I'll try." Below are some of the MELVYL system's features that transform it from a catalog to a reference resource. SHO HISTORY/REDO The Feature Every bibliographic search system should have a feature like SHO[W] HISTORY. It acknowledges the reality that the search process, whether or not for a "known item," is normally one of trial and error: search A: "0" results; search B: OK, but could be better; search C: totally off the mark; search D: also not so good--perhaps redo the one that was okay, but you cannot remember which it was. …