Amazon had (i haven't checked recently), an annoying habit of assuming that
you had spelt something wrong, correcting it for you and giving you those
results. It wouldn't be until you tried to browse the results that you
would start to think "hang on these aren't relevant" and look at your search
term to then find it was not as you typed it.
NCSU (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/searchcollection/) don't redirect the user,
but they do use the subject headings as prominent refinement tools. I
realise this isn't quite the same as redirecting a natural term to a
thesaurus term, but it is easy to use, and above all understandable to the
user. However, a basic search for 'sermons, english' (7894 results)is not
the same as clicking on the subject heading 'sermons, english' (5599
results).
Another case where redirection is used is in the Wikipedia. Disambiguation
pages highlight possible different meanings, and where redirection is
automatic, you have a 'redirected from...' message at the top of the page.
Perhaps the UI metaphor for redirection from non-preffered terms should be
to say, 'you searched for ..., this is what we have ...'
As a slightly related point, How many users use the authority system
searching? surely most users use a search based on keyword searching? -
this would add weight to the idea that NCSU has it right by using the
controlled vocabulary to allow a user to broaden or narrow their search,
rather than using it as a search target in it's own right.
Tim
http://informationtakesover.co.uk
On 09/06/06, Walter Lewis <lewisw_at_hhpl.on.ca> wrote:
>
> Megan Manchester wrote:
> > Wow, Jenn, this is really great. I had wondered if
> > anyone was doing this.
> Authority systems with keyword searching of non-preferred terms that
> either
> a) take you directly to the preferred terms or
> b) stop and show you the preferred term leaving it another click away
> are definitely a piece of the puzzle that needs to be addressed in any
> NGC (see how easy it is to fall into TLAs).
>
> I've been a big fan of them in our local work as well.
>
> Caution: be careful about taking the user to a result, the path to
> which isn't evident on screen. In other words, if I search for "Canata"
> and you return all the "Canada" results that may be great. But if you
> *really* wanted "Kanata" then the words "stupid system" might well
> escape our user's lips. For you, "stupid system" might then refer to a
> search interface from vendor X, while the "preferred term" on my site
> might be Vendor Y.
>
> I think we need to *try* to ensure that the results page gives *some*
> clue(s) as to how we went from your precisely spelled search values to
> our finely crafted result set, especially when the part in between is
> otherwise indistinguishable from magic.
>
> Walter Lewis
> Halton Hills
>
--
---
Tim Hodson
informationtakesover.co.uk
www.timhodson.co.uk
Received on Fri Jun 09 2006 - 10:39:41 EDT