Quoting Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_JHU.EDU>:
> I think we could usefully spend more time, not trying to improve the
> relevancy ranking, but trying to improve the tools and UI we provide
> for increasing precision (rather than changing the ranking -- I
> think the ranking actually does okay as is) of searches that end up
> too low-precision/high-recall even with relevancy ranking. The
> "facet limit" tools we all provide are one such technique, but I
> think we can make em work better and be more powerful without being
> more confusing.
One of the issues is that we are working with the facets we have
rather than the facets that would be most useful. (Oh shades of
Rumsfeld!) There may be somewhere an analysis of what facets we would
LIKE to have... and that would be helpful for any work being done to
create the next generation of MAchine Readable Cataloging for
libraries. For example, I've found the "FAST-like" separated subfields
from LCSH used in the Open Library to be more interesting as subject
facets than full LCSH. Those are obviously derivable from the MARC
data, but I wonder if there isn't other data that we would like to have.
Some will jump in here and say that we can't possibly add any new data
to our records at this point, but I find it terribly defeatist to
think that what we have today is all we can do. I'd rather have an
idea of what would be better than what we have now.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Wed Mar 30 2011 - 20:01:24 EDT