Re:Internet Archive: What’s new with v2
by bane on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @11:40AM
(#9414786)
I really feel like the new design does a much better job for random browsing and discovery. I've come across stuff I never would have otherwise just scrolling around.
I think it does a bit better if you know the exact name of what you're looking for. I get a much better idea of how many duplicates or variants of an item are in the collection now.
However, I think it does a much worse job navigating to finding things you already know are there, but maybe don't quite know the name of. It's almost impossible to navigate to something if you just have partial knowledge of it, or generally know where it is in the archive but don't have specifics. I find this super frustrating.
I love archive.org more than just about anything else on the internet, and I'm willing to be patient with the new design as they flesh out the ideas. If they can fix the navigation issue I'd be relatively happy.
I think what archive.org needs more than this redesign is an organizational meta-layer on-top of the archive where volunteer "curators" can organize content spread all over the archive (or siloed under some random collection somewhere) into more familiar, library-like organizational structure.
For example, I like old computing magazines. However, archive.org doesn't have a "magazines" top-level hierarchy. If you search for "magazines" over on the right side-bar there's a "Magazine Rack" Collection, but it's not prominently places. And then the layer under that is a mishmash of "Collections" that include magazine genres, individual titles, etc. but no clear "computer magazine" collection. I poked around for a few minutes and still didn't find the collection for old computing magazines.
So I did another search for "computer magazines" and finally there's a collection of "Computer Magazine Archives".
However, this is probably incomplete, there's bound to be other magazines that are not part of this collection.
It'd be much easier if I could go
Texts/Magazines/Computers
and everything would be there by title, maybe set a filter for "English" or something and be off reading
But right now it's takes a dozen navigation clicks and a few searches to find the same, once you find a collection you end up bookmarking it in your browser because you'll probably forget the magic combination of searches and clicks that got you here.
It's tough though, they're doing an immense job with relatively few resources to organize everything. So I can live with some of the disorganization. It's still an amazing treasure trove.
I think it does a bit better if you know the exact name of what you're looking for. I get a much better idea of how many duplicates or variants of an item are in the collection now.
However, I think it does a much worse job navigating to finding things you already know are there, but maybe don't quite know the name of. It's almost impossible to navigate to something if you just have partial knowledge of it, or generally know where it is in the archive but don't have specifics. I find this super frustrating.
I love archive.org more than just about anything else on the internet, and I'm willing to be patient with the new design as they flesh out the ideas. If they can fix the navigation issue I'd be relatively happy.
I think what archive.org needs more than this redesign is an organizational meta-layer on-top of the archive where volunteer "curators" can organize content spread all over the archive (or siloed under some random collection somewhere) into more familiar, library-like organizational structure.
For example, I like old computing magazines. However, archive.org doesn't have a "magazines" top-level hierarchy. If you search for "magazines" over on the right side-bar there's a "Magazine Rack" Collection, but it's not prominently places. And then the layer under that is a mishmash of "Collections" that include magazine genres, individual titles, etc. but no clear "computer magazine" collection. I poked around for a few minutes and still didn't find the collection for old computing magazines.
So I did another search for "computer magazines" and finally there's a collection of "Computer Magazine Archives".
However, this is probably incomplete, there's bound to be other magazines that are not part of this collection.
It'd be much easier if I could go
Texts/Magazines/Computers
and everything would be there by title, maybe set a filter for "English" or something and be off reading
But right now it's takes a dozen navigation clicks and a few searches to find the same, once you find a collection you end up bookmarking it in your browser because you'll probably forget the magic combination of searches and clicks that got you here.
It's tough though, they're doing an immense job with relatively few resources to organize everything. So I can live with some of the disorganization. It's still an amazing treasure trove.