Left brain or right brain?

If you've been reading "It's All Good" for a while, you may recall that a few months ago I lamented that OCLC hadn't got anything to show for the long time we've been mulling over visual display of information. Well, good news. The pilot has been launched. Our colleague Tom Storey is the editor of the OCLC Abstracts and I stole the title from his notice about the pilot.

Here's what he wrote.

"OCLC and Antarctica Systems, Inc. to test library users’ search preferences.
OCLC is launching a pilot to evaluate library users’ experiences with searching and display of search results using a visual interface developed by Antarctica Systems, Inc. The pilot will run from January through April 2005 and will be implemented on a database of electronic books that will be available to all users of the OCLC Base Package and the OCLC Collection on the OCLC FirstSearch service.
Antarctica Systems, Inc. will use its VisualNet data visualization software to create a visual interface to the electronic books database. When users select the electronic books database on FirstSearch, they will be given the option to use the visual interface for searching and viewing results. OCLC will conduct a user survey to gauge feedback during this pilot and will also collect usage statistics that will be evaluated for future applications."

If you are not a FirstSearch subscriber, Antarctica has a link to the ebooks data here.