On Feb 7, 2008 3:55 PM, Bennett Ponsford <BPonsfor_at_lib-gw.tamu.edu> wrote:
> One of the (many) things that surprised me about our results was how seldom our library faculty/staff used the author headings browse (2.70%) or the subject headings browse (1.05%). Particularly given their preference for a nice, traditional, left-anchored title search (35.04%) over title keyword (6.06%).
>
The title is usually the name a work is known by, and calling for
things by name rather than associated attributes (such as author)
makes perfect sense. Subject headings browse is for geeks. Thanks to
the screwball rules for constructing precoordinated headings, you can
expect around half (literally) to be unique even in very large
catalogs which limits their usefulness for collocation purposes.
Subject heading searches in most catalogs remind me of constant
examples in the computer world where we try to mold human behavior
around the needs of our systems rather than trying to figure out how
to work with what people do intuitively (e.g. requiring dates
expressed YYYYMMDD, prohibiting certain common characters for many
operations, Byzantine password regulations, etc)
On Feb 8, 2008 8:32 AM, Bennett Ponsford <BPonsfor_at_lib-gw.tamu.edu> wrote:
> Thanks for the info, Karen. One of the things I also want to look at is response to no hits messages at small libraries. My experience - entirely anecdotal - at my previous place of employment is that a lot of the students, especially grad students and faculty, didn't expect us to own much and so accepted a no hits message at face value.
>
The problem isn't just with no hits. It's also about what people do
when they do get results.
Even in our own literature, it is often obvious which 2 or 3 keyword
searches where used to locate resources for a "literature review."
Figuring out the best way to let users know of related works is not a
straightforward problem. Logfile analysis can be helpful as can
actually observing users, but if we don't have the motivation of the
search to give us context, there is an awful lot of wiggle room for
interpretation.
kyle
Received on Sat Feb 09 2008 - 10:29:28 EST