![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Attention All Authors!
If you are reading this and you are writing a book or may be writing a book or are thinking about maybe possibly writing a book, please please consider avoiding titles that fall into the Boolean keyword trap?
It only took me a couple of times to figure out why my title search for Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness was pulling up many, many results, none of which was the book, in the Fort Worth Library's online catalog, but I'm a librarian. Someone unfamiliar with the ins and outs of searching is going to drop the title in and assume that the book isn't in the library if it's not in the first screen of results, and not notice that the "or" in the title is bollixing the search. They often won't bother with the author's name, or even with making it a title search instead of a keyword search, and when you end up doing a keyword search in a library for "magic or madness" ... well, the results ain't pretty.
I'm doing the usability study. I've seen it happen. It takes all my will to remain silent and not leap up, rip the mouse out of their hands, and say "Let me show you why you're not finding it," or not refrain from shouting "Scroll down! Scroll down! It's THERE! You are TWO INCHES AWAY FROM THE ANSWER!!"
* Note to self: make sure that when you do the study focusing specifically on the OPAC at work next summer, that you use a title search exactly like this one with "and" or "or" in the title, to document what it does for the library.
It only took me a couple of times to figure out why my title search for Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness was pulling up many, many results, none of which was the book, in the Fort Worth Library's online catalog, but I'm a librarian. Someone unfamiliar with the ins and outs of searching is going to drop the title in and assume that the book isn't in the library if it's not in the first screen of results, and not notice that the "or" in the title is bollixing the search. They often won't bother with the author's name, or even with making it a title search instead of a keyword search, and when you end up doing a keyword search in a library for "magic or madness" ... well, the results ain't pretty.
I'm doing the usability study. I've seen it happen. It takes all my will to remain silent and not leap up, rip the mouse out of their hands, and say "Let me show you why you're not finding it," or not refrain from shouting "Scroll down! Scroll down! It's THERE! You are TWO INCHES AWAY FROM THE ANSWER!!"
* Note to self: make sure that when you do the study focusing specifically on the OPAC at work next summer, that you use a title search exactly like this one with "and" or "or" in the title, to document what it does for the library.
no subject
A friend has a book with the words "close encounters" in the title. The spam filters keep nabbing emails in which she mentions it, probably because the phrase is used in porn spam.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Good luck.
no subject
There's one question on it that's testing something that came up in last fall's survey - people complaining that they can't find books that they know are in the library - and we think we've narrowed the problem down to the author field - turns out that our new catalog, unbeknownst to us and unlike our old catalog, doesn't automatically swap the terms in the field and try that if someone types an author's name in.
So when I've got "Find four books written by Isaac Asimov" on the page and someone dutifully types in "Isaac Asimov," and then clicks Go, they'll find about a million books about Asimov, and none by him (and will end up at Janet Isaacs if they refine the search using the "Author Name" option). I've only had one of the four people so far tested give up - two automatically typed it in last-name-first, and the other one typed just the last name in - but that still tells me there's probably a pretty big chunk o'students out there who haven't developed their research skills yet that will be running into this problem.
no subject
no subject
Anyway, I think this clear shows why special commands should be symbols (like & and |) or else ALL CAPS, and why things in quotes should be treated literally instead of as containing commands. Of course, for naive searchers, maybe even that's too complicated, but I'd hope that people are less likely to accidentally use symbols, ALL CAPS, or quotes than standard English words like "and" and "or" and "near" and "not".
no subject
It's possible that some people will use ALL CAPS, but they tend to be the sort of people who write interoffice memos and emails in ALL CAPS under the impression that it somehow makes it look more important. XD
For most searchers, who usually aren't as good as they think they are*, they tend to type in keywords from the syllabus, question sheet, or notes they took in class, and so ... er, I had a point in there somewhere, but have forgotten it.
* The test subject that I used to test the test itself, and therefore her results aren't really part of the study, said that she was a persistent searcher, and when she had a question, she'd not stop until she found the answer, didn't really exhibit behavior I'd consider persistent - she never went farther than one screen into results from article databases and didn't use synonyms. And that's typical searching behavior, I'm finding. My goal for the webpage is for all pages on the site to be accessible within two clicks from the main page. (I'd say one click, but I think that's a feat of organization that's beyond my powers.)
no subject
They're not likely to use meta-words or symbols because those wouldn't be in the syllabus, question sheet, or class notes? In particular, they won't use Boolean terms or simulate "or" by hand by typing in a subset of keywords instead of all of them?
no subject
"Adolescent smoking" gives no end of useful articles, but they don't even try "teenage," so "adolescent" is really a far reach. Arg.