{"id":140,"date":"2009-04-15T07:28:12","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T14:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=140"},"modified":"2009-04-15T07:31:20","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T14:31:20","slug":"i-do-not-understand-the-point-of-curated-databases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/i-do-not-understand-the-point-of-curated-databases\/","title":{"rendered":"I do not understand the point of curated databases"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Nesster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lately I’ve been volunteering to do usability testing<\/a> for Yale’s library. Well, “volunteering” is probably too generous a word, since Yale pays pretty well, in the form of iTunes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. I like the gift cards, but I love<\/em> the excuse to rant about what I do and don’t like about the library interface.<\/p>\n

I have no idea how much of my ranting is actually relevant to the subject of the tests, but I enjoy it anyway. Most recently, I enjoyed ranting about what I’ve been calling “curated” databases, since I don’t know the technical term for them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m talking about things like America: History and Life<\/a>, a product put out by ABC-CLIO that indexes articles, dissertations, and book reviews that ABC-CLIO thinks are relevant to American history and culture. I’m irritated when researchers into American history are directed (and we always<\/em> are) to America: History and Life to find relevant articles and books.<\/p>\n

My thing is, why? Maybe a product like this that selects subjects for the researcher was useful in the olden days, before keyword searches, but I feel I should be able to set the parameters of my search, not an invisible curator. Why should someone else decide what’s relevant to American history and culture when I can set my own limits using keywords and get much better coverage in AcademicSearch and JSTOR?<\/p>\n

I really think that the Students of Today feel similarly. We’re used to curating our own searches in Google. I apologize to the well-intentioned experts who have created these databases, but I don’t think we need you.<\/p>\n

Speaking as a former curator, I definitely do think there’s a place for expert selection — in a digital exhibition, for example. But in a search, we expect coverage, not curation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately I’ve been volunteering to do usability testing for Yale’s library. Well, “volunteering” is probably too generous a word, since Yale pays pretty well, in the form of iTunes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. I like the gift cards, but I love the excuse to rant about what I do and don’t like about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,14],"tags":[42,41,332],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-technology","category-libraries","tag-catalogs","tag-rant","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}