Re: opac live search - Plymouth state demo again

Hello Casey,

Apologies for my previous email and the .jpgs that did not work like I 
thought. I'll stick to plain text.

As a user, I like it! I only had to type the "on th" part of my title 
search for "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac and a nice drop down menu 
appeared to complete my search, shown in this jpg.  I was presented with 
a short list for title, subject, or title begins with.  Quick, useful, 
and intuitive service.  I also included a .jpg of what happens if you 
are looking for "cookery" because that one seems to work too.  FYI, in 
this catalog there do not appear to be any hits for "dirt bike" or 
"all-terrain" anything.  --pam
*
*

Casey Bisson wrote:
> The autocomplete that I implemented in Scriblio searches across title, 
> author, subject (and others), and suggests possible matches in any of 
> them. You can see it here:
>
> http://library.plymouth.edu/
>
> I've been skeptical of the value of autocomplete (there are a number 
> signs that suggest that it slows down the user experience or leads 
> them to prematurely narrow their searches), but I've been pleased at 
> how it works against library data. I'm especially happy at how it 
> allows users to begin a search without first having to select which 
> field to search.
>
> --Casey
>
> On Feb 18, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Mike Cunningham wrote:
>
>> I thought someone on this list might be interested in this. I now 
>> have a proof of concept running on our staging port of an 
>> autocomplete/live search feature for the opac. You may have seen this 
>> type of feature on sites like Amazon or Zip.ca. It comes back with 
>> different results depending on which search field the user selects 
>> (title, keyword, author, subject, call number). Since there is no 
>> keyword index per se, keyword also uses the title index. The feature 
>> kicks in after the user has typed at least 3 characters.
>>
>> I'm curious if anyone knows of other library catalogues that do 
>> something like this. Someone pointed out to me that BiblioCommons has 
>> a feature like this. Does anyone know of others?
>>
>> You can try it out here:
>>
>> http://search.cambridgelibraries.ca:2082/search
>>
>> There is some background info on the feature here:
>>
>> http://ex-libris.ca/?p=694
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> -- 
>> Mike Cunningham
>> Web Services Librarian
>> Cambridge Libraries
>