Date: March 13, 2000
Speaker: Gary Perlman — OCLC
How do people really use a search system? How do librarians and library patrons behave differently .(on a Web search, that is)? How can user interface design affect searching? Which search options requested by librarians are actually used by patrons, and which are not?
Gary Perlman will explore these questions and suggest ways that search systems can be made more effective for library patrons. He will discuss just how the utility of bibliograhic vs. full-text records varies between librarians and patrons.
You can expect to hear some challenging ideas and to take part in a lively, cross-disciplinary discussion. We’ll have colleagues from the human factors and user interface design communities to talk with and learn from.
FirstSearch User Interface
Gary will discuss the UI architecture for the new OCLC FirstSearch bibliographic and full-text retrieval database Web site. Gary will describe how to design the UI architecture so that developers, writers, translators, graphic and UI designers, and even marketing people can work on the same functional system at the same time without affecting each other (yeah, right! This you gotta hear.)
Gary will cover the issues of adapting to multiple hardware, OS and browser platforms, multilingual and visually impaired user access.
You can preview the new FirstSearch (and even use it!).
Gary Perlman is a Research Scientist at OCLC, working on the FirstSearch user interface. He has worked with user interface issues since 1982 as a consultant, professor, and tool developer. Gary has a Ph.D. from UC San Diego in Cognitive Psychology with extensive coursework in computer science.
Gary’s primary professional objective is in improving the quality of how people use information and their productivity working with information. His interests include hypertext and information retrieval, software engineering, human factors and ergonomics, applied statistics, technical communication, and science, technology and mathematics education.
For more information, visit his website: http://www.acm.org/~perlman/