End users
End-users have not always been considered a priority audience. However, the IFLA Standing Committee affirms the importance of the national bibliography as a key cultural heritage resource and recommends that measures are taken to ensure public access to the information.
This category includes a highly varied range of users including:
- Library patrons
- Online users wishing to find and identify publications
- Formal or informal groups and corporate bodies.
Numerous potential usage examples exist e.g.:
- Printers identifying publishers to offer cooperation
- Journalists to identify language/genre/origin patterns in publications
- Organisers of book fairs
- Identification of translators from/to specific language
- Identification of illustrators
Information requirements from the national bibliography
End-users primarily need to obtain information on:
- Authors and their publications
- Subjects
In order to:
- Identify works for further study or acquisition
- Obtain access to publications
- Produce lists of references
Expectations also include:
- Access to electronic resources (taking into account rights, authentication and authorisation etc.)
- Location information for traditional publications
- Display or export of bibliographic records in appropriate formats
Descriptive metadata requirements (for offline files or printed national bibliographies):
End user requirements for display of results or citations are similar to those of reference librarians wishing to identify specific publications i.e. data displayed should include:
- Complete records
- All elements needed to identify, select and enable to obtain access to publications (See IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, 1998)
Search requirements (for online national bibliographies):
Search requirements are similar to those of reference librarians or book trade users and therefore require similar access points e.g.: