The Principle of Least Effort listed
evidence that people only set moderate goals for information retrieval, and
"satisfice," or are satisfied with not even reaching those moderate
goals, but consider lesser amounts of information "good enough."
It argues effectively that as librarians, we have a responsibility to
create an environment that allows the most quantitative and qualitative
information retrieval for the least amount of work. The conclusion of the
Bibliographic Objectives chapter restates this point. It emphasizes the
need for a full-featured bibliographic system as a necessary adaption to modern
needs of information retrieval, just like card catalogues originally made
libraries searchable.
It's interesting to me that even art
historians, a scholarly discipline which I would think would be more prone to
in-depth searching and obtaining accuracy and depth of information, still fall
victim to the principle of least effort. They still satisfice with less
information. If even art historians don't research up to our high
standards, how can we expect any non-librarian to
"The cost to the user of going beyond
his immediate environment may outweigh the cost of using sources that are
judged inferior by other people." I think this speaks not necessarily
just to physical environment, but even more to comfort level, as the studies
cited make repeated reference to "perceived" ease of use rather than
just ease of use. Some sources are difficult to judge. If we google
information, and read only the first article, our information may be a joke, an
anomaly, a loud-spoken but ultimately incorrect or unvetted opinion. It
could be anything. Similarly, people don't necessarily know which library
resources and tools are liable to return the most relevant and most vetted
results on a given topic. And, having found one that works once, it's
hard to convince someone to roll the dice again. Sometimes we have a
"system that makes some channels easy and others difficult to use - or
difficult to perceive at all." Some research methods are difficult
to find and utilize, and so, aren't considered as options.
The google search window display shows one
trick that makes searching easier. When I search for a business, it
doesn't just take me to the business's website directly, it accumulates and
presents relevant information in a predictable way. I get the business's
address, phone number, hours of operation, a map to the business, in many cases
a description and reviews of the business, and a link to the website for more
information, all organized so that the information I'm most likely to need is
near the top. That's why people often use google instead of library
resources. It's not just portability or usability, it's collocation and
presentation. Obviously that doesn't work with all information, but if we
could script our search engines to refine relevancy, people would have to put
in less effort to find the depth of research necessary and we'd have more users
and more in-depth research in general.
In Bibliographic Objectives, one paragraph
still has me completely befuddled:
Also in breaking with tradition, the first IFLA objective does not specify the sets of entities to be found but relegates this task to an n accompanying entity-attribute-relationship model. This is problematic from a database design point of view. In the design of a database objectives should determine ontology and not vice versa, since for any given set of objectives, alternative models can be developed for alternative purposes. Moreover, a statement of objectives should embody a hypostatization of user needs. It should state just what it is that users need to find.
After some research I understand the
concept of entity-attribute-relationship models. This refers to a type of
database model wherein an entity, say a book, is coded with the attribute, say
its title, by a relationship, i.e. this is the title. The article claims that a
lack of specificity in the IFLA objective is a bad thing and goes on to list
specific values (title, author, etc.) I don't see why this is necessary
in a definition of objectives, or how it (according to the section above)
contradicts alternative models and purposes and the idea of objectives
determining ontology. I would think that the lack of specificity does the
opposite and places more value and primacy on the objective. We know that
searching by title and author are common objectives but I don't think limiting
search methods and parameters by over-specifying presumed user needs does us
any good, especially in terms of defining principles and general objectives.
Also, the use of the word hypostatization
is used in a confusing way for me. As far as I'm aware, it refers to a
fallacy of making a vague concept concrete, leading to erroneous or false
assumptions. While I believe the over-specification may be committing
that particular error, it's presented as a positive user outcome, so perhaps I
am misunderstanding the term in this context.
The Invisible Substrate of Information
Science ties all these concepts together. It is our underlying objectives
and principles: our library culture. I would argue that it is also our misconceptions
and biases, such as the notion of teaching people to search more in depth and
do the difficult research, versus presenting information in an easily
retrievable format. We like to research and organize information, and
perceive our own value and that of others by the standard of how well they do
it and how much work they're willing to put in to gather the right data.
However, that bias can lead us to labeling scholarship as lazy, or even
people as lazy, because their particular passion or field does not necessitate
or lend itself to the kind of in-depth research we're judging them on the basis
of.
Thus, I think the Principle of Least
Effort is absolutely a necessary tool to curb the impulse to assign value to
people's research methods. As Bibliographic Objectives states, our job is
to make scholarship easier, to encourage more effective and efficient
scholarship, rather than requiring a specialized scholar to learn an entirely
new field: that of information retrieval.
