Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Mangm* (for Management, etc.)

Typo of the Day for Librarians
Mangm* (for Management, etc.)

Interesting sounds, that [g] and [ji]. That insignificant "e" takes on greater significance, especially when it's not there.

We assume (perhaps incorrectly) that searchers are speeling (sic) correctly when they search, thus the purpose of the Typo of the Day. If our data is displayed incorrectly, then those searching correctly are far less likely to retrieve what they search, much less what they need.

How we manage our data (typos included) becomes increasingly important. What with so many records being loaded en masse without passing by the human eye, without a concerted effort to "fix the wrong", searchers and researchers may very well miss that seminal work.

There are more than a few of this typo in OhioLink, in fact 171 instances of Mangm* as a keyword search, and 15 instances of Mangm* as a subject search.

While we may not be able to fix 'em all, we can manage to do better, IMHO.

Sometimes trying to work on typos resembles herding cats, albeit without the scratches.



(Image from Google Images)

This many instances of "Mangment" place this typo in the A list (those of highest probability) in Typographical errors found in online library catalogs.

Cary Daniel

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