[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Introduction and Question

[Patrick Durusau]

Elaine,

Sorry about the delayed response! I have been in contract negotiations 
for some consulting work. ;-)

Yes, I remember you from the Newton County library. Hope you are doing well!

Hardy, Elaine wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
;-)

Well, I am hardly new to using computers but I do have expectations that 
the search results bear some resemblance to the search that I have entered.

Now, if I ask for a keyword search, I know I am going to get results 
that may or may not be obviously related to the keyword that I used.

I don't have the book that I used as an example so I don't know if the 
name that was matched in the 700 field was the author's "correct" name 
or was a co-author or what.

What I would expect for an author search for example, if there is a 
match in the 700 field, for that name to be displayed (assuming it is a 
co-author's name) along with the main author's name. In other words, 
reform the presentation to avoid the dissonance between the search and 
the results.

True enough that when I followed the record back to the full MARC record 
I could discover at least the reason for the result and I suppose having 
a page that describes search behavior might help, but be honest now, 
when was the last time you walked up to a strange OPAC and read the 
documentation on how it performed searches before using it? ;-)

Yeah, about the last time I read a software license before I 'clicked' 
on yes or accept on an install routine.
>  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.
>
>   
True but I would suggest evaluating how difficult it would be to make 
the displayed results conform more closely to the search request.

What I found may be too rare to merit that sort of correction. Doing a 
search on the record set to see where a the 100 field doesn't match the 
700 field would be one way to get an empirical idea of how prevalent the 
problem may be. It could be too seldom to merit any real effort at 
correction. But that would be the only way I would know to find out for 
sure, at least for author searches.

As the software develops, it might be useful to actually do user studies 
to determine user expectations for searching. It isn't hard to build 
systems that match "our" expectations, but those are hardly the 
expectations of the average user.

BTW, I am still curious about the "relevance" algorithm that returned 
jazz music for the search term (without quotes) np-completeness. Or does 
the system not react well to hyphens in names unless surrounded by 
quotes? Not real sure why it would parse a hyphen but I have seen odder 
things. (Noting that when I surrounded it with quotes "np-completeness" 
I got zero hits, not jazz.)

Hope you are looking forward to a great weekend!

Patrick

PS: One more question: Are there plans to add synonym support to further 
confuse users with search results? ;-) I would think it would be an 
advanced search option.


> 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.
>
>   

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick at durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Acting Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, OpenDocument Format (OASIS, ISO/IEC 26300)