(Quoting screwed up from previous email)
Laura wrote:
"
P.S. Advanced music search still leaves a lot to be desired (boolean
keyword search finds lots of records with e.g. something else by
Prokofiev and somebody else's 2nd piano concerto).
"
In general, I'd rather have too many results than too few, because I
can work through too many, while I can't work through none. ;-)
On 6/12/06, K.G. Schneider <kgs_at_bluehighways.com> wrote:
>
> When we say "advanced search," what do we mean? A search that cannot be
> accomplished through basic search? If that's the case, then "advanced
> search" sounds less like advancement and more like remediation to address
> findability issues not achievable through basic search.
>
If you hold as the ideal "find me the one record I actually want, only
that one, but always that one", then advanced search is some distance
toward that goal. I think most searchers do have that as a goal, but
doing an overly broad search is better than one that's overly narrow,
because, as I noted above, the broad results can be used to narrow if
needed, but it's hard to know which way to broaden if you're already
too narrow.
Which, I think, just agrees with what you're saying: people that are
not expert searchers are better off without "advanced" search--
they'll succeed more that way, even if it does take more time than
optimal because they sift through lots of noise.
But it'd be nice to give more feedback to people in their search than
"0 results". Suggestions of near misses or areas of similar/alternate
interest might be useful (even when the actual search -does- have
results).
Received on Mon Jun 12 2006 - 12:43:23 EDT