Introduction to Pathfinders

School of Information Sciences

IS 534

Pathfinders

Pathfinders were originally developed at MIT as succinct, printed bibliographic guides on specific topics arranged in search strategy order to help users in writing a paper or doing personal research on a popular topic. They are designed to be used f or popular topics that result in repeated, similar queries. Pathfinders allow reference librarians to ration scarce time by allowing users to begin with guidance and then reappear only when there are snags. In a sense, it is self-service reference. Pathfinders are also the major handout left behind after a bibliographic instruction section. Some information professionals prefer "library guide" to pathfinder, but guides do not usually follow the step by step pattern. It is the step-by-step organization that distinguises the pathfinder from the guide. The strategy used to organize the pathfinder is the same one that you would use in the reference interview/interaction when working with a typical user for a typical information need. Typical interview/pathfinder elements would include:

Definitions and scope [inclusions and exclusions]
Brief overview or introduction
Where to find general articles/chapters
Where to find scholarly articles/chapters
Where to find in-depth content.

As most academ ic libraries develop webpages, you will find a growing number of pathfinders on the web. GODORT collects pathfinders relating to government information and makes them available for downloading at its website. Although few or none are true "pathfinders," you may wish to examine examples to get a sense of what might be involved.

The original MIT pathfinder was limited to two pages (one sheet of paper) and included these elements in this order:

Scope (definition)
An introduction to this topic appears in...
Highly relevant, also relevant, and more general desciptors used to find information on this topic in a subject catalog
Encyclopedia and handbooks with information on this topic are...
Bibliographies on this topic are...
Periodical articles on this topic may be located in these indexes and abstracting services
Periodicals likely to include articles on this topic are.... and
Other formats likely to be helpful fort his topic

Pathfinders should be organized by the numbers to help the typical users to find what they need. This means that you need to decide what to do first, what to do second, and so on.

As you develop your strategy, you will consider content formats likely to be most useful. Here are a few possibilities:

Periodical articles
Books or chapters in books
Technical reports
Websites
Maps
Images [still or moving]
Audio files.

As you develop your strategy, you will consider access points likely to be most useful. Here are a few possibilities:

Catalogs
Indexes
Abstracts
Bibliographies [for similar for non-print formats]
Databases.

For each of the above, consider the most productive descriptors or subject headings.

The search strategy must be efficient, i.e. take the fewest possible steps. The search strategy must be logical and make sense to the user [after explanation]. When tested, it should be highly productive. The items mentioned first are those likely to be most useful. Items mentioned later are likely to be more specialized or of interest to fewer users. Once the strategy is completed, the next step is to identify and characterize particularly useful sources. In some cases, these will be representative of an entire class of items. Each source mentioned should be annotated. Annotations should answer two questions: (1) WHAT is this work about? And (2) WHEN should I use it? Please note that not all published pathfinders follow this model. Sometimes, they are simply collections of useful items arranged by format.

Pathfinders were originally limited to one sheet of paper in order to be user friendly and to force the librarian to eliminate all but the most essential information. This seems reasonable to me. One sheet or two pages should be enough space. This do es not mean that you use 6 point type and .25 inch margins to squeeze in more stuff.

In this course, the patfinder assignment is different because the subject is a government agency. This means that some of the variables to be included in the pathfinder may be different. Below I have listed some variables that you may wish to consider.

Variables	Variables
Full name	Brief introduction/history
Administrative organization Parent organization Major units	Relevant books/articles on the agency
Purpose/scope	Leadership
SuDocs class	Size
Url for WWW site	Bibliographies of agency publications
Major publications	Indexing and abstracting services likely to contain information about agency and its activities
Descriptors/name associated with agency in classification schemes and in indexing and abstracting services	Address/contact information
Relevant on-line data bases

The Government Printing Office has a project called Browse Topics that may be relevant for those planning a pathfinder to WWW sources. Examples of current topic guides are available on the depository libraries WWW site. Major points to be considered in this type of a pathfinder are:

Identification of relevant government information using a variety of searches
/li
Confirmation that these sites are official and authoritative
Organization of these resources in a logical manner
Inclusion of hot links to the selected resources (be certain they are current)
Descriptions must be concise, incorporating content from sites as much as possible (don't summarize agency mission if you can link to a site that does that).