SPAM: RE: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Introduction and Question

[Fred.King at Medstar.net]

In the grand tradition of "me too" posts, let me add, me too. Just a 
couple of days ago, I was assisting a user who could not understand why 
his search was bringing up so many articles that apparently had nothing to 
do with what he put in to the search box. I get that kind of question all 
the time, and being able to see just how someone got there would be very 
helpful. Would a "click here to display the whole record" button help, or 
would it add to the confusion?

Fred King
Medical Librarian, Washington Hospital Center
fred.king at medstar.net
202-877-6221

open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org wrote on 09/14/2007 
07:40:47 AM:

> 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


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