{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03374012921751615, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003589375448671931, 'mean_word_length': 4.784232365145228, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Response to Barbara Tillett, Re: “Meeting Users’ Needs in Cataloging: What is the Right Thing to Do?”

I thank Dr. Tillett for her comments, and the editor of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly for giving me the opportunity to respond. In a paper I presented at the Ethics of Information Organization conference in May 2009, I ask how cataloging should meet users’ needs. Dr. Tillett states that I “ignored the history of user studies,” a statement with which I respectfully disagree. In the paper, I point out that most user studies in cataloging take a traditional, or systems, approach to users. This is opposed to the current paradigm in Library and Information Science (LIS), which favors a user-focused approach to research and practice. In the traditional, or systems approach, users are studied in relation to existing systems or standards, in order to make better matches between systems and users’ queries. In the user-focused approach, users are studied away from existing systems or standards in order to understand users’ needs and information searching behavior. This information can then be used to build systems and standards that better meet users’ needs.1 Cataloging research tends to take a systems approach to users. This is not a new idea. For example, in the report that Dr. Tillett cites, Online catalogs: What users and librarians want, the authors cite Donald Case: