The Unofficial Footnote Blog

Part 2 of 4

I had problems

I had searched the LA city directories for Francis Sharbrough, but I was pretty sure that half of the entries were not OCR’d properly, and would require a browse to find the page for the Sharbroughs. It was a good idea, even if it wasn’t very practical.

I thought I would just “open the phonebook” to the right page. To do that on Footnote, you’d typically use Browse. That wasn’t as easy to do as I’d hoped. Each directory is identified in the browse structure by year, but within year, you have to go to the pages.

In this example, you can see that City Directory “browse structure” at FN is by state, then by city, then by year.

In this example, you can see the browse structure for the 1907. Pages that don’t contain lists of names are entered as [Gen. Info]. Each case is followed by the page number. If you wanted to get to page 500, you’d have to click on the numbers at the bottom of the right-hand column. The layout supports moving by up to two sets of 12 pages at a time (in this case, from group 1 to group 3), with a jump to the end and the beginning. When there are 2118 pages, as is shown at the top of the column, there are 177 “groups of 12″ in the directory. You could get to any desired page by jumping to the front or the back, then moving two “groups of 12″ at a time until you get to the page. In the hypothetical case I’m explaining, where the user wants to go to page 500, they would start at the beginning, and move to the 42nd group of 12. This would require about 20 clicks on the bar. One could wish for an easier way to browse, but Footnote executives and designers know that 99% of users search for names, and almost no one browses. It’s not as painful as having a zit on your nose. In the big scheme of things, it’s hardly to the status of irritating. And when I get those three wishes to change the world, I won’t be using one of them to get the best browse experience on Footnote.

In a perfect world …

There are two changes that I would suggest, after the caveat that it’s probably not worth the time and trouble to make them. First, I’d separate the book into at least 3 “sections” – the Front Matter, the Residential listings, and the Classified listings (the “Yellow Pages”). Some directories also contain a “cross listing” where they show all of the names on a given street, in address order. This would reduce “the fan” somewhat, as there are about 500 pages of front matter and 500 pages of classifieds. Then a user would only have a max fan size of about 1000 pages in the residential listings. Second, inserting a browse level by first letter of last name, so I could just jump to the “S” listings. I wouldn’t ask for a second level, the “Sh”-names. Footnote could create the initials through software, without having to hire someone to key those.

The biggest reason to add the “sections” is to separate the classified and the residential listings. Footnote made a little error, which we didn’t foresee when we defined the browse structure for the first directories. The classified sections are not organized alphabetically by business names. They are organized alphabetically by category, and alpha after that. Footnote has instructed their editors to key the first surname on the page, so instead of seeing “Cigar Makers” the page might be headed “S O Wilson and Sons” in browse. If you are ever at the “back” of the browse for a city directory on Footnote, you’ll see jumbled names in this section. It might be too late for the directories that are already online, but it seems possible for Footnote to change the instructions for future books, to key the business categories instead of the business names. It would not only be intellectually less offensive, but it would enable users to use the search method that I’ll describe below to find Dressmakers as well as Sharbroughs.

Again, I want to emphasize that there are good ways to find people in city directories, and that Footnote can find better ways to use their resources than to act on my idle suggestions.

Next: What Worked