[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 2.5.2 Subject Browse Index

[Donald Butterworth]

I agree with Janet, that the whole subject phrase needs to be kept together
so that only the limited set displays when clicking on the phrase. There
are lots of DLC authority records that include a main subject and
subdivisions.

In fact ... what I would love to see in the Subject Keyword Search is for
the result display to have an intermediate screen based on the whole
subject phrase. For example the subject keyword "self" in my database
retrieves 1668 bib records. Not very helpful. Instead I would like to see
it pull up any subject phrases that include the word self:

English language -- Self-instruction (20)
English teachers -- Self-rating of (1)
Self (56)
Self-acceptance (12)
Self-acceptance -- Religious aspects (3)
Self-acceptance -- Religious aspects -- Judaism (19)
Self-actualization (Psychology) (112)
Self-actualization (Psychology) in old age (4)
Self-actualization (Psychology) -- Problems, exercises, etc. (5)
Self, John, 1912-1993 -- Contributions in medicine (1)

Anybody else like this alternative?

Don


On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 06:10:11PM +0000, Janet Schrader wrote:
>
>>
>> I apologize if I'm misunderstanding this. Will the separators cause the
>> subject in the browse list to behave the same way the headings do in our
>> bib record display? I think subject headings in browse and in the bib
>> record should be treated as a complete entity, not as separate topics. I
>> looked at Bibliomation's index and if I click on "United States History
>> Civil War, 1861-1865 Women" I get the 55 entries which is the number in
>> parentheses after that link.
>>
>> Currently in our bib record displays the subject headings have
>> separators. So the subject heading looks like this:
>> United States>History>Civil War, 1861-1865>Women.
>> If I click on 'United States' the search is for just that part of the
>> subject. If I click on 'History' the search is for 'United States>History'.
>> If I want to search women in the Civil War I have to click on 'Women' to
>> search the entire subject phrase.
>>
>> The unfortunate scenario here is that clicking on the beginning of the
>> subject phrase searches only 'United States' and the search times out so a
>> patron gets "sorry no entries were found for 'United States'". Which
>> separate term clicked on determines what gets searched. It is not very
>> intuitive to know that you have to *start at the end* to make the search
>> more specific.
>>
>
> Hmm. The current behaviour seems intuitive to me, but I think I had a
> hand in designing and implementing it, so that's probably not surprising.
> For what it's worth, Amazon seems to use exactly this scheme for
> enabling users to broaden and narrow their searches in their
> best seller ranking system once they've landed on an item (see
> http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00JKT6VVY for an example).
>
> Do you have an alternative suggestion for representing subject headings
> so that it is both possible and more intuitive to search for just
> "United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865" in your example, if a
> user wanted to broaden their search from the initial record on which
> they might have landed?
>
> While I agree that it's unfortunate that broad search terms result in
> search time outs, that's a different problem and it should not drive how
> we represent subject headings.
>



-- 
Don Butterworth
Faculty Associate / Librarian III
B.L. Fisher Library
Asbury Theological Seminary
don.butterworth at asburyseminary.edu
(859) 858-2227
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