Faceted navigation and browsing features in new opacs: Robust support for scholarly information seeking?

At the end of 2005, impending digitization efforts and several developments related to the creation of access and discovery tools for informational and cultural objects resulted in a series of responses that continue to ripple throughout the library, museum and archive communities. These developments have broad implications for all three communities because of the goals shared by each in the creation of description, control and enhanced access to informational and cultural objects. This position paper will consider new implementations of faceted navigation and browsing features in online catalogs. It is also a response to challenges to develop interwoven approaches to the study of information seeking and the design and implementation of search and discovery systems. Urgently needed during this time of experimentation, development and implementation is a framework for system evaluation and critical analysis of needed and missing features that is grounded in traditional principles, borne out by practice. Such a framework could extend feature analysis protocols established during the early years of online catalog development.