Re: Relevance ranking: was Aqua Brow

This is very cool and interesting. Though as you said it needs work, it
is an excellent proof of concept.I plan on showing it to my colleagues.

By the way, when you said, "I think it's too much to
> expect people to use two different tools to search materials
> and it must be merged in some way. Otherwise, people will use
> Google and stop--as so many of them do today."

I couldn't agree more.

PS: I am jealous you are in Rome!

:-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 10:31 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Relevance ranking: was Aqua Brow
>
> > I've been staying out of this, but I can't stand it anymore...
> >
> > In regard to this discussion, which is better Google,
> catalog, this or
> > that...really, doesn't it boil down to what our users find
> most useful?
> > That is, our catalog interfaces are not being used because
> users are
> > not finding the results of their searches useful. Useful
> also may have
> > different definitions for different users.
>
> Please understand that I am definitely *not* saying that
> Google is any better or worse than regular library catalog
> searching. It has its own strengths and weaknesses just as
> does the library catalog. What is interesting and
> advantageous for all is that the weaknesses of Google are the
> strengths of the catalog, while the weaknesses of the catalog
> are the strengths of Google.
>
> > Karen Coyle:"I still maintain that Google search should be
> judged in
> > terms of what it retrieves from Google, and library catalog search
> > should be judged in terms of what it retrieves from the library
> > catalog."
> >
> > I would agree with above: and then add, but people are not
> finding our
> > results as useful as google. Why is that?
>
> I hesitate to agree with this because it seems to be that we
> are concluding that "east is east and west is west and never
> the twain shall meet." I think a blending of the methods into
> a new type of catalog/search engine/relevance retrieval cum
> conceptual indexer (whatever we want to call it) can be done.
> Karen and I disagree on the need for a single search from
> users to get people what they need. I think it's too much to
> expect people to use two different tools to search materials
> and it must be merged in some way. Otherwise, people will use
> Google and stop--as so many of them do today.
>
> Talking about creating something new, I shall announce again
> my own attempt at The American University of Rome where I
> have enacted an "Extend Search" capability, which takes the
> user's search so that the user can decide which other
> databases to search. It certainly needs a lot of additional
> changes, but so far---once people understand how it is
> used--my users seem to like it a lot. One place where it
> needs work is to be simplified a lot to make it more user
> friendly (that is, the user should not have to be trained to
> use it, but it should work more naturally).
>
> You can look at it at
> http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl. It is a
> reworked 2.2.7 version of the Koha catalog (waiting for
> version 3!) and it works closely with a separate wiki, where
> I can provide additional information to the users. I would
> also like the wiki to work much more closely with the catalog
> than it does now.
>
> To see how the "Extend Search" works, take a look at the wiki
> page at:
> http://aurlibrary.wetpaint.com/page/Extending+the+Search?t=anon
>
> So, I'm coding too!
>
> James Weinheimer
>
>