[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Introduction and Question

[Hardy, Elaine]

Although it has been a few years since I actually helped patrons in a
library, they do ask why a record came up if they can't see their search
term. Particularly, if they are searching for an author or title and
something totally unexpected is in the result set. It was not unusual
for a patron new to using computers to ask, actually. They are trying to
understand how to search and whether they've made an error in
constructing the search.

 Even now it is not unusual to get a question via library staff asking
why a record came up for a particular search. Although, it is more
common to be asked why something didn't come up.  The real estate may be
precious, but I would err in providing more information to users.

Elaine


J. Elaine Hardy
Library Services Manager - Collections & Reference
Georgia Public Library Service,
A Unit of the University System of Georgia
1800 Century Place, Suite 150
Atlanta, Ga. 30345-4304
404.235-7128
404.235-7201, fax
 
ehardy at georgialibraries.org
www.georgialibraries.org

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
[mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Dan
Scott
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:25 PM
To: open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Introduction and Question

On 13/09/2007, Jason Etheridge <phasefx at gmail.com> wrote:
It could be useful info, I think, for a small population: developers
interested in tweaking search algorithms, librarians doing detective
work who want to peek under the covers, and for the atypical patron.
If you're going that far, you might as well show the query after
processing as well (strikeout text for stopwords, greyed-out text for
stems that were removed, etc).

That being said, I don't think most people are going to care how a
particular item was matched with the search string - not enough to
make it a visible part of every retrieved record. That screen real
estate is precious! If you could make it unobtrusive (hide it by
default, surfacing it only with a deliberately set user preference, or
a tiny little "How did you find me?" link), it could be nice.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University