In situ cataloging

Is there a common name for what you do in, say, flickr, when the process of adding descriptive metadata actually occurs in the UI where that metadata will primarily be seen? By which I mean: you see the same image other people see, you click on the "title" block to edit the title, you click on the "description" block to edit the description. Y'know, like this:

in situ cataloging

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I've been talking with enough folks lately who see this as an important principle that I'm wondering if it's already been named. For flickr users I guess they just call it "editing the title". But for a librarian, living in a world where most of our descriptive cataloging happens in strange forms where those forms themselves tend to be wholly unrelated to how our UIs render the data the forms capture, this seems an important distinction.

I've struggled to find my own name for it, though I'm tending to like the best one I've found so far, "in situ cataloging". i.e. "cataloging in the place where the descriptive information you're recording is both edited and then seen exactly in the place where your users will see it."

Did I miss something, and does this already have a name? Is this important enough to call it something agreeable-to-many? It's been around for years, sure, but it seems like if somebody'd named it (other than with something obvious like "useful dhtml") I'd remember.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://onebiglibrary.net/trackback/250

Anon. (not verified) on May 14th 2008

Not so much the cataloging side, but I guess from the developer / UI design side I've seen it referred to as "Edit-in-place".
I hadn't given it much thought before reading about it in Designing the Obvious

Bruce (not verified) on May 14th 2008

Edit-in-place, or in-place editing, is an implementation of one of Alan Cooper's axioms: "allow input wherever you have output". From his "About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design".

Real world terms like "repainting" or "touch-up" are probably too whimsical.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <pre> <code> <img> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <blockquote> <form> <input> <span> <object> <embed> <br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <code>, <blockcode>, <apache>, <bash>, <css>, <diff>, <dot>, <java>, <javascript>, <mysql>, <perl>, <php>, <python>, <rails>, <ruby>, <sql>, <xml>. Beside the tag style "<foo>" it is also possible to use "[foo]".

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
8 + 11 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.