I'm not spamming, I swear
This might only be funny to UNCG students but I think any college student will be able to get a laugh or two out of it. It is my formal complaint to the university library about the new journal search engine. It has a little box to check if you want a reply so I'll post the reply on here as a comment when I get it.
This is not a suggestion, this is a complaint (to put it in civil terms). Last year I used the journal database constantly to get specific and up-to-date information on my topics. I typed in my query and it searched all the databases and then proceeded to give me a list of articles that matched my interest. Then I would click on one of the items in the list and then I would click on the PDF icon and proceed to read. Sometimes the icon was not to be found and I would either skip the entry or go find it somewhere else.
This year searching for scholarly articles in journals is basically an exercise in futility. I might as well just hit my head agains the monitor until information falls out because every single other way I try is just not going to work. I search and it gives me a list of articles. I look for anything that says "full text" but I can't. I can't actually KNOW if there is a full text, I have to CHECK for it first. So I check for it which basically only takes me to ANOTHER search engine. Well, I already know the title of what I'm looking for so I type it in. I get the name of the journal this time! I click on it and bam. All the articles ON that journal. I dont know why I even bothered searching for the title in the first place. I should have simply signed up for that journal when I got to high school so I might be able to look at somewhat recent information. So, I'm looking through the journal volumes for the one that was printed on the same year as the article on my search list and I finally find it. After freaking out about not being able to find the article I realize that they print two volumes a year. So I click on the second volume for that year and... there it is! my article! sweet merciful jesus my article is... an abstract. AND NO PDF ICON.
I want you to understand. The problem is not that it is "difficult" to find information. The problem is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find information. This is not "not user-friendly," this is user-abusive! I would prefer it if I could simply walk over, get punched in the ear, and receive my information than using the current journal search engine simply because I would actually get the information I'm looking for, and it would be infinitely less aggravating.
I dont know where it all went wrong. I'm sure you had your reasons for deciding to change the way the journal search works. But as far as I understand it was made so that students could find them and use them for their research. This is clearly not being done so I ask you to please take a very critical look at how to make this feature of your website as useful as it was in the past.
I did not mean to be offensive in writing this complaint, I was trying to be entertaining and fully expressive of my sentiments. If you chuckled as you were reading this and then decide to show it to the appropiate people and they laugh about it as well and then make it so that I can read the elusive "full text" I will feel that the past 10 minutes were better spent than trying to figure out how I'm going to do my research.
Have a nice day!
This is not a suggestion, this is a complaint (to put it in civil terms). Last year I used the journal database constantly to get specific and up-to-date information on my topics. I typed in my query and it searched all the databases and then proceeded to give me a list of articles that matched my interest. Then I would click on one of the items in the list and then I would click on the PDF icon and proceed to read. Sometimes the icon was not to be found and I would either skip the entry or go find it somewhere else.
This year searching for scholarly articles in journals is basically an exercise in futility. I might as well just hit my head agains the monitor until information falls out because every single other way I try is just not going to work. I search and it gives me a list of articles. I look for anything that says "full text" but I can't. I can't actually KNOW if there is a full text, I have to CHECK for it first. So I check for it which basically only takes me to ANOTHER search engine. Well, I already know the title of what I'm looking for so I type it in. I get the name of the journal this time! I click on it and bam. All the articles ON that journal. I dont know why I even bothered searching for the title in the first place. I should have simply signed up for that journal when I got to high school so I might be able to look at somewhat recent information. So, I'm looking through the journal volumes for the one that was printed on the same year as the article on my search list and I finally find it. After freaking out about not being able to find the article I realize that they print two volumes a year. So I click on the second volume for that year and... there it is! my article! sweet merciful jesus my article is... an abstract. AND NO PDF ICON.
I want you to understand. The problem is not that it is "difficult" to find information. The problem is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find information. This is not "not user-friendly," this is user-abusive! I would prefer it if I could simply walk over, get punched in the ear, and receive my information than using the current journal search engine simply because I would actually get the information I'm looking for, and it would be infinitely less aggravating.
I dont know where it all went wrong. I'm sure you had your reasons for deciding to change the way the journal search works. But as far as I understand it was made so that students could find them and use them for their research. This is clearly not being done so I ask you to please take a very critical look at how to make this feature of your website as useful as it was in the past.
I did not mean to be offensive in writing this complaint, I was trying to be entertaining and fully expressive of my sentiments. If you chuckled as you were reading this and then decide to show it to the appropiate people and they laugh about it as well and then make it so that I can read the elusive "full text" I will feel that the past 10 minutes were better spent than trying to figure out how I'm going to do my research.
Have a nice day!