+1 as well On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Rogan Hamby <[email protected]> wrote:
> +1 > > On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Kathy Lussier <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> I wanted to float an idea to the community. I spent a little time this >> morning looking at a bug submitted earlier this year regarding the Matches >> Exactly search option in the advanced search screen - >> https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1267129. After thinking about >> the problem, I came to a conclusion that I've drawn on similar occasions >> when looking at previous problems with exact match searching that has since >> been fixed. Overall, I think this search option along with, to a lesser >> extent, the Starts With search option, is more likely to cause frustration >> for users than to solve any search problems. >> >> I'm curious to know if others have found the same problems in their >> libraries and, if so, if there is any willingness in the community to >> remove those options in the advanced search screen to save frustration on >> the part of users. >> >> My reasons for removing them are below: >> >> 1. The intent of this search option is to perform a left- and >> right-anchored search on the search terms. The entered search terms need to >> exactly match the index as it appears in the relevant metabib table. If >> doing a title search, you need to enter the entire title including 245a and >> 245b. I believe most users are unlikely to know what the subtitle is for a >> book and a. The re more likely to enter just the words that are in 245a. >> >> 2. Right now, there is a bug with Matches Exactly. As of now, if you >> enter the following terms in the search box: >> >> the joy of cooking >> >> the system will retrieve anything that begins with "the", ends with >> "cooking" and also contains the words "joy of" in no particular order. I >> just conducted a matches exactly search for the help today and, in addition >> to retrieving "The Help" it also retrieved a record for "The Berenstain >> Bears hurry to help." The fix for this particular issue is fairly easy, but >> the fix also means that the Matches Exactly will become even more >> unforgiving than what I outlined in #1 above. Punctuation will matter more. >> In addition to entering all of the words in the 245a and 245b, the user >> will also need to know where to add punctuation. From what I can tell, this >> isn't consistent for all punctuation. In looking for the title "The assist >> : hoops, hope, and the game of their lives" the following search works: >> >> "^The assist hoops, hope, and the game of their lives$" >> >> but these searches do not work: >> >> "^The assist : hoops, hope, and the game of their lives$" >> >> "^The assist hoops hope and the game of their lives$" >> >> It looks like the user needs to know that the colon should be removed, >> but the commas should remain. >> >> 3. The "Starts With" search is a little more forgiving since a user is >> more likely to know the start of a title rather than the entire string, but >> it still suffers from the problems of a user needing to know what >> punctuation should be entered (or not entered) for the string that they >> type. Since it is a search that uses left-anchoring, it also does not >> ignore non-filing indicators, which is something that users sometimes >> expect it to do. Note: I was the person who added the "Starts With" search >> to Evergreen, mainly as a way to ameliorate the issues we saw with the >> "Matches Exactly" search. Now that Browse search is available in the >> catalog, I don't think this particular search is necessary on the advanced >> search screen anymore. >> >> 4. In a standard Evergreen installation where no custom indexes have been >> added, both of these search options will probably fail for a keyword >> search. This happens because, by default, there is one keyword index (the >> blob) where all of the indexed terms for the record are stored, and there >> is no way any user could know all of the terms that are stored there and >> their proper order. If they are entering a title, they are more likely to >> have successful Starts With keyword searches because the title seems to be >> the first thing that starts off the blob, but if the user were entering any >> other terms (author's last name?) for a Starts With keywords search, the >> search will fail. >> >> Rather than present a search option to our users that has a higher >> likelihood of leading to unsuccessful search results than our other search >> options, I would like to see if there is willingness in the community to >> remove these options in the next (March/April) release of Evergreen. >> >> Please feel free to share any feedback you have to this idea. >> >> Thank you! >> Kathy >> >> -- >> Kathy Lussier >> Project Coordinator >> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative >> (508) 343-0128 >> [email protected] >> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier >> #evergreen IRC: kmlussier >> >> > > > -- > > Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA > Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services, > York County Library System > > “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit > me.” > ― C.S. Lewis <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis> > -- Ruth Frasur Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson Township Library 10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346) p (765) 489-5632; f (765) 489-5808 Our Kickin' Website <http://hagerstownlibrary.org> Our Rockin' Facebook Page <http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary> and Stuff I'm Reading <http://pinterest.com/hjtplibrary/ruth-reads/>
