On Apr 2, 2008, at 10:43 AM, Emily Lynema wrote:
> In the context of this discussion, just wanted to note that we've
> experimented with the idea of using the uncontrolled text in
> bibliographic records (like title and table of contents) to point
> users
> to possibly relevant subject headings that have been assigned to the
> records retrieved for their natural language search. It works well for
> some types of searches, but not as well for others.
We're doing something similar with titles. Words that frequently co-
occur in the title with search terms are offered as suggestions for
further searches. As with your experiment, it seems to have benefits
in some situations. Enough so to make it a feature worth having.
One nice thing about suggestions is that users do not have to accept
them. The main problem seems to be when users think that all
suggestions are obliged to be relevant to the topic in their head,
regardless of how it was expressed in their search terms. Still
looking for the "do what I mean" interface.
-Tod
Tod Olson <tod_at_uchicago.edu>
Systems Librarian
University of Chicago Library
Received on Fri Apr 04 2008 - 11:31:25 EDT