Our ILS is CARL, and I am aware that the reason for many of our problems can
be found in that statement. And I work a a community college, so none of
our students are doing research for theses, etc. That said, I have
found that keyword searching of our catalog is close to useless for many of
the topics that our students search for, and our catalog has no option to
rank by relevance, (subjects like racism, immigration, civil wars, equal
rights, biology of gall wasps, and the subject word search isn't much better
because it is so literal. What I have found that works really well
(although not in the catalog unfortunately) is the kind of topic searching
allowed in proquest where you type in a bunch of keywords and it offers
suggestions for subjects where you might find good results. It is somewhat
like keyword searching in subject headings, but I think even better because
it seems to have synonyms and aka's built in -- of course I don't know
anything about the back end, so I can only speak from the position of user
and instructor.
For the catalog, about the only successful strategy for most of our students
is to find a librarian. I think it is a different problem in public
libraries where patrons are often searching for a specific author or title
or for information related to a topic they know something about.
Sandra Rotenberg
Solano Community College
Fairfield, CA
On 6/8/06, David Dorman <dorman_at_indexdata.com> wrote:
>
> At 09:48 AM 06/08/2006, K.G. Schneider wrote:
> >I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Our library catalog is used
> >daily by our patrons and without it people wouldn't be able to find
> >anything. They use it to find books, to access our electronic resources,
> to
> >check their records, etc. Statistics even show that students are
> searching
> >for items more than ever. Yet, they also show that they are using subject
> >searches most often and having difficulty finding information that way.
> >
> >———-
> >In 2002, one of the first modifications to Librarians' Internet Index on
> my
> >watch—a data-driven decision based on what I saw from search log analysis
> >generated for another purpose—was to *remove* the options to refine the
> >search on the front page by subject, title, URL, description, and I
> forget
> >what. Search failures dropped a whole bunch. I forget the percentage, I
> can
> >look it up, it was high double digits.
> >
> >Someone then said I was Dumbing Down LII. I remember sharing that with
> Roy
> >Tennant, whose comment was, "good." It has kinda been my goal with our
> >project to keep dumbing it down until even I can use it successfully all
> the
> >time.
>
> Your point is well taken, but we should be
> careful not to elevate very simple or "dumbed
> down" searches to an ideology. The appropriate
> granularity of search and retrieval, represented
> by how articulated indexes are and what search
> functionality is offered to the user, is affected
> by many factors. Among them are the age and
> knowledge of the searcher and the nature and size
> of the database being searched.
>
> Taking the size and nature of the database into
> account, for example, it makes perfect sense that
> the LII, which has only tens of thousands of
> metadata records covering a multiplicity of
> subject areas, would often be most effectively
> searched via one keyword anywhere index rather
> than via specific subject, title, etc. indexes.
>
> However, databases with millions of records, or
> specialized databases with even just hundreds of
> thousands of records, would often be most
> effectively searched by a multiplicity of
> specific indexes, boolean operators, and various
> retrieval filters to increase search granularity.
>
> Any catalog, whether existing or "next
> generation," should be flexible enough to
> accomodate a range of search and retrieval strategies.
>
> David
>
>
> >I also remember a guy from a NJ system who in the late 1990s often said
> he
> >wanted to remove the subject search from the public's view of the
> catalog.
> >The fact is that if you designed a catalog interface from the user
> backwards
> >you'd at best offer subject searching buried on an "advanced" page, with
> a
> >warning/explanation. Putting "subject" searching on the main page is part
> of
> >the collective denial we're in that users understand how and when to use
> it.
> >
> >————
> >
> >My comment about library staff being the primary audience was worded
> badly.
> >I meant that in its current iteration it is most intelligible to library
> >staff and in that way I think they are the audience that understands it
> >and uses it to its fullest capacity. I guess I see the catalog as having
> >been designed for use by library staff and that seems to be one it
> biggest
> >problems because we are not the primary audience.
> >
> >—-
> >Indeed! Not only that—but often librarians overestimate their own ability
> to
> >successfully use features—or whether the features will be used at all—or
> >whether they are even needed.
> >
> >Karen G. Schneider
> >kgs_at_bluehighways.com
>
> David Dorman
> US Marketing Manager, Index Data
> 52 Whitman Ave.
> West Hartford, Connecticut 06107
> dorman_at_indexdata.com
> 860-389-1568 or toll free 866-489-1568
> fax: 860-561-5613
>
> INDEX DATA Means Business
> for Open Source and Open Standards
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>
Received on Thu Jun 08 2006 - 12:05:17 EDT