So my example was a bit out there (as well as tongue in cheek), but the
way our catalogs work now, is it a wonder many people go to Google first
when looking for information? It may be unrealistic to think there's a
book out there that's only (or at least 33%) about removing raccoons,
but darnit, that's what's under my mom's porch! Your suggestion sounds
great. Now can we tie the results to reader reviews, internet sources
(especially local), blogs, etc.?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> "Sorry, your search resulted in 0 hits; I've ORed the terms
> instead of ANDing them." is at least one step towards helping
> the patron find a result that could meet their needs, and it
> offers concrete feedback that the original search yielded 0
> hits. Finding a reasonable way to give you useful options
> (like offering to OR all synonyms for humane; using an
> ontology to recognize that a raccoon is_a animal and is_a
> wildlife and ferreting out relevant subject keywords on that
> basis; determining that the phrase "raccoon removal" often
> appears in discussions of animal control on teh interwebs or
> in a massive database of full-text) that could lead you to
> "humane wildlife removal" (which does give useful results in
> worldcat), giving you explicit feedback and control along the
> way, is how I _think_ such a system could work.
>
> --
> Dan Scott
> Laurentian University
>
Received on Tue Aug 07 2007 - 15:48:41 EDT