Determine some elements or attributes that might be useful for the purposes of discovering and retrieving a particular resource of interest to you, for example, the prescribed textbook for this subject. Review these elements in light of the FRBR user tasks – are they all useful for all of the user tasks, or for some tasks more than others?

As information specialists who facilitate efficient access to information, it is crucial that our catalogues are well organised and effectively described. Organising information can be a little bit like herding cats – no doubt that’s why it’s called a catalogue!

I found this list of metadata elements that I feel are a useful overview of the types of elements/attributes that can help libraries organise information effectively:

From my experience, depending on the information need and the user task, not all of these elements/attributes will be useful.

For instance, I think that finding the textbook for this subject was very straightforward. Because we have been given the links via the Resources tab I think that I skipped the first few user tasks. I went straight to Select since I needed to make a choice between the two links, and chose the Cambridge Core item because it was described as having unlimited user access. I then Obtained the item by clicking the link. It was very easy for me as a patron to fulfil my information need in this instance due to the effective organisation and description of the information resource. I did not need to Find, Identify, or Explore because this resource had been found for us by the course organisers who had identified its usefulness. Because these steps were eliminated from my search process, I did not need most of the elements listed in the above table. I only needed the bibliographic description to ensure that I had the correct item and the access rights description.

However, if I was searching for information for another purpose, such as if I was researching a new topic to teach at school, my needs would be different and so too would my process. As an example, I am teaching English Extension 2 this year and have a student whose Major Work involves elements of historical fiction. Looking through the JSTOR databse, together we Found relevant resources by searching specific criteria, then Identified the key ideas and Selected which ones might be more suitable for her needs before Obtaining them via pdf download. Because this search was more vague, more elements/attributes were called upon to make decisions about whether a resource contained relevant information. In this instance we drew upon not only the bibliographic descriptions, but also subject descriptions and item specific attributes to understand whether the resource was relevant or not.

It is therefore important for teacher librarians to understand the information needs of their users and which of the FRBR user tasks they are requiring to ensure that our resources are described using effective elements/attributes. If our resources are not described effectively, we risk our patrons becoming overwhelmed and missing important, relevant resources. Ain’t nobody got time for that.