Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> I too have been thinking about how to incorporate "see also" type
> references from our rich bibliographic records into our search
> functions. In addition to "did you mean", it's possible that in
> some/many cases, the search should be _automatically_ expanded. For
> instance, from Eric's examples, in some cases when the user enters
> "Jive" in a keyword search, should the search be automatically expanded
> to include "OR subject: Blues (Music)"?
This reminds me of the first time that we tried automatic integration of
LC authority records with the university's bib records. Somehow,
everyone named "Mia" also got indexed with the terms "Manila
International Airport." In your case, a linguistics student would get a
large number of unrelated music records.
The problem with words is that they need context in order to have
precise meaning. Facets can help this, but as Kyle mentions, most people
don't use them. I think the key issue here is making it easy for the
user to provide that little bit of context that is needed. That's
definitely where we've failed so far. Unfortunately, I don't have a
viable solution.
kc
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Mon Mar 31 2008 - 12:28:51 EDT