Karen Schneider’s post on the ALA Techsource blog, “How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It),” is a rant by a librarian who either presents a foregone conclusion due to incomplete research, or one who reaches a conclusion out of misunderstanding. Unfortunately such rants are fairly common. Karen complains about the lack of relevancy ranking in most online catalogs, something that most search engines routinely employ. She sums up the result of her research with the following statement:

“Relevance ranking is just one of many basic search-engine functionalities missing from online catalogs.”

Be sure to read the post as well as all of the comments (28 so far).

So why do I find this post problematic? Well, first of all, Karen makes a blanket statement like the one quoted above, without qualification. The fact is that library online catalogs do include relevancy ranking, and they have for years. The online catalog for Endeavor, for example, called WebVoyage, has had relevancy ranking for just about all of its existence (about nine years). It has never been “perfect” but it has been there. No, it doesn’t work in the same manner as, say, Google’s Pagerank algorithm. (It predates that technology, anyway.) And I don’t think it should be expected to, either. I agree that the ease of use and the transparency of the results for library online catalogs should be close or very similar to Google’s but comparing library online catalogs to Google in this way is like comparing apples to oranges. For one thing, the underlying data and databases for library online catalogs is almost entirely different than the data and database(s) underlying a major search engine. See screen shots here that illustrate this capability in WebVoyage.

Another problem I have with this post is that it blames vendors of library online catalogs for the fact that relevancy ranking isn’t apparently present in many instances. There is no consideration given by Karen to the possibility that relevancy ranking may not appear to be available because libraries themselves have chosen not to implement it or make it readily available to their users. The perspective here is very one-sided. Let’s all blame the vendors for inhibiting us librarians from properly serving our users and meeting their expectations. Vendors are by no means blameless, but neither are librarians. Just once, I’d like to see Karen and others of her ilk acknowledge that situations like these are not as black and white as they may like to believe. Sometimes I think it’s a matter of convenience because many librarians have long since cast “the vendor” as the bogeyman (“how dare they actually care about making money?!”). I say, look at both sides of the issue and especially do not be so quick to lay blame without truly understanding the reality of what vendors provide and what vendors do. Here is another quote from Karen’s post:

“But the interesting questions are: Why don’t online catalog vendors offer true search in the first place? and Why we don’t demand it? Save the time of the reader!”

OK, so what is “true search,” Karen?! (I don’t believe that is defined anywhere in the post.) What you define as “true search” isn’t necessarily how another person might define it. This is just common sense. If “true search” is meant as relevancy ranking, as I’ve already pointed out, vendors HAVE offered and DO offer “true search.”

But I’m beginning to see that that kind of answer doesn’t fit the simplistic, librarians-as-hapless-victims paradigm Karen has preconstructed so it wouldn’t count. It wouldn’t be relevant.

P.S. In one of her comments responding to another person’s comment, Karen talks about how vendors don’t offer field-weighted searching in online catalogs, either. I can’t wait to read “the facts” she will present. [Updated 3/20/2006: Especially since Endeavor's WebVoyage does already provide field-weighted searching.]