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Satisficing Digital Library Users

a
James A. Buczynski
a
Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology at
York , 70 the Pond Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ,
M3J 3M6
Published online: 16 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: James A. Buczynski (2005) Satisficing Digital Library Users,
Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 10:1, 99-102, DOI: 10.1300/J136v10n01_08

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 BRIDGING THE GAP
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James A. Buczynski, Bridging the Gap Editor

Satisficing Digital Library Users

James A. Buczynski

ABSTRACT. Given the endless volume of information available to-

day, searchers are forced to satisfice when searching. The first satisfac-
tory alternative is chosen over the best. Digital library search services,
however, do not support satisficing users. There is no single, simple,
comprehensive search service available to end-users to meet their need
to gather information on alternatives from all information repositories
accessible through a digital library. Federated search services bridge the
gap between satisficing searchers and today’s digital libraries. [Article
copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:
1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Web-
site: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All
rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Federated searching, satisficing, interface design

James A. Buczynski (james.buczynski@senecac.on.ca) is Information Services Li-

brarian, Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology at York, 70 the Pond Road,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 3M6.
Internet Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 10(1) 2005
http://www.haworthpress.com/web/IRSQ
 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J136v10n01_08 99
 100 INTERNET REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY

Looking back at the last ten years, despite their best efforts and initia-
tives, librarians have not only failed to gain ground but have lost status
in the Information Age. They’ve built digital libraries and have bravely
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taken on information literacy crusades only to be ignored or positioned

as a resource of last resort. Taking a broad view of the services we pro-
vide, the cause for our lack of effect is clearly evident. Our services
have evolved to become too complex to use with any satisfaction. The
end-user is not uniformed, as many information literacy campaigns
proclaim, but misunderstood. Any service that requires extensive
training to use is bound to fail. People will select other options, even if
they are inferior. Search engines like Google and peer-to-peer file
sharing applications like Kazaa provide end-users with the simplicity
they seek. Enter your search terms and scan the results. Iterate until
you find something that sufficiently meets your needs. Popular search
services meet the “I don’t want to have to think” usability criteria prized
by researchers. Today’s formal “digital libraries” are vastly more com-
plex by comparison. Although the textual content available from popu-
lar repositories of resources is not comparable to digital libraries, it is
often “good enough” to meet a searcher’s information need.
Herbert A. Simon, in Models of Man (1957), coined the term
“satisfice,” to label a decision-making model whereby an alternative is
selected based on meeting a minimum acceptable level for each deci-
sion criteria. The first satisfactory alternative is chosen over the best,
given the burden of gathering information on all alternatives to make a
wise decision. Given the endless volume of information available to-
day, searchers are forced to satisfice when searching. Digital library
search services, however, do not support satisficing users. There is no
single, simple comprehensive search service available to end-users to
meet their need to gather information on alternatives from all informa-
tion repositories accessible through a digital library.
There is a “gap” between our need for practical and innovative solu-
tions to this problem and our actual supply of those ideas and solutions.
Thomas Homer-Dixon coined the phrase “ingenuity gap” (2000) to de-
scribe the affliction affecting experts in all disciplines. This column will
explore initiatives attempting to bridge specific ingenuity gaps, like the
one outlined above.
Federated search services, also known as broadcast, meta or multi-
protocol searching are a relatively new bridge between digital libraries
and end-users. Some product examples are: Encompass (Endeavor),
WebFeat, MuseGlobal and Sirsi SingleSearch. They enable digital li-
braries to develop end-user-friendly search services that simultaneously
 Bridging the Gap 101

query multiple information sources and display the retrieved results in a

single list of findings. A single, simple user interface is used to search li-
brary catalogs, popular Web search engines, literature abstracts and in-
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dexes, information aggregator services, e-journal databases, and local

digital information repositories. Although the technology and its de-
ployment are in its infancy, and is fraught with developmental limi-
tations, it provides a simple user interface to digital libraries for
satisficing searchers. One search, one list of retrieved alternatives to
consider, based on submitted search criteria. Support for satisficing
searchers.
The technology that makes federated searching possible has proven
to be difficult to deploy. Contentious decisions must be made to maxi-
mize the utility and functionality of the software, given its many inher-
ent limitations. Limitations include system stability, technical barriers
to integrating certain classes (non-textual repositories, file level-digital
rights management protected content, etc.) of information resources
into federated search engines, network capacity, remote authentication
management, and metadata field mapping mismatches between feder-
ated search technologies and information resources.
Federated search engines connect to other resources using a variety
of protocols: XML gateway, Z39.50 and HTTP. The connectors for
each resource vary in sophistication and stability. Generally, XML
gateways are the most powerful and reliable followed by Z39.50. HTTP
is the least robust and its query operations are the least structured and
least sophisticated. Given the problems with HTTP connectors, many
libraries have chosen to avoid them altogether. This in turn substantially
decreases the number of resources available for connectivity. For a uni-
versity library with four hundred or more information repositories on
subscription, this decision is not as limiting as for a college or public li-
brary with only fifty repositories on subscription. Small non-U.S. based
vendors are usually only accessible with HTTP.
Search and retrieval time and network capacity limit the number of
resources that can be searched simultaneously. The number of hits re-
trieved is also preset, based on performance testing, for each resource
and cannot be exceeded. Full-text embargo periods, in aggregated infor-
mation products, have proven problematic since hits are sorted by date,
newest first. A list of hits can easily have no full-text available content,
and programming a connector to retrieve only hits with full-text is not
always possible.
Mapping specific search field queries in federated services to spe-
cific indices in each resource searched is far from reliable. Fields may
 102 INTERNET REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY

be missing, searching syntax may differ and thus many search permuta-
tions may not work in specific resources that can be bundled together.
The index with the most utility for one product (ex., title keyword) may
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be the worst for another in the same search. Making decisions on set-
tings to keep end-users from becoming frustrated with error messages,
is humbling to librarians used to providing users with endless precise
searching options.
Libraries who have developed federated searching services have
consistently reported that their library staff has resisted supporting a
system whose search queries vary in sophistication, standardization,
structure and reliability, depending on the resource or bundle of re-
sources being accessed. The system, however, is not designed to meet
the needs of expert searchers who have mastery over searching avail-
able alternatives, in an information product’s native end-user inter-
face. Satisficers, especially novice searchers, are embracing federated
searching services and expensive digital library subscription resources
that were once often ignored are being rediscovered and more heavily
used. The “bridge” over the “gap” is far from ideal, but end-users are
making the crossing.