[637] in ad-lib
027, 088, 074 indexing in Pubnum
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sbyrd@MIT.EDU)
Thu May 18 18:04:18 1995
From: sbyrd@MIT.EDU
To: m.ridgeway@geac.com
Cc: opac-lib@MIT.EDU, ad-cat@MIT.EDU, gyoung@MIT.EDU, ganderso@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 18:03:44 EDT
Michel, here's a final thing about the B.Index that we'd like to have
changed if possible. As you may recall, you added 027, 088 and 074
to the B.Index, to the Pubnum index, and you indexed them "as is,"
that is, as you said, "there is no normalization, space removal, etc."
To me, this means that in order to retrieve one of these fields, you
have to input the letters in exactly the same way they appear in the
record--if it's a mixture of upper and lower case (as they sometimes
are), you have to mirror that usage exactly in your search or else you
get nothing. This is a concern, because that places a burden on the
user to know exactly what case the letters are in as they appear in
the bib record, and this may differ from the citation they have in
hand to search from.
We're also concerned that these searches are now indexed inconsistently
with the 2 other searches in the Pubnum index, 028 subfield a and 086.
Both of those are indexed in all caps, that is, you have to input all
letters in 028 or 086 in all caps in order to retrieve them.
Ideally, what we would like would be for all searches in the Pubnum
index to be case-insensitive. (These would be 027, 028 subfield a,
074, 086, 088.) By that I mean we would like them to be
indexed so that no matter how they appear in the record, upper or
lower case, that the user could input the search in upper or lower
case, or a mixture of both, and retrieve the record regardless of how
it appears in the record. Is this possible?
If not, our next priority would be for them all to be indexed in upper
case, so that the search would have to be with all letters entered in
upper case by the user in order to retrieve the record. Then our next
priority would be to have them indexed in lower case.
The overriding priority, however, is that however they're indexed,
they should all be indexed consistently. The more we deviate from
that in similar searches, particularly in number searches such as
these, the more difficult it is to use, to train users, to keep
straight in our own heads, and to document.
To recapiluate:
We would like every search in the Pubnum index to be consistent.
This means 027, 028, 074, 086, 088. Here are our priorities for how
they should be indexed:
1. TOP PRIORITY: every search in the Pubnum index should be
case-insensitive. In other words, index them so they are retrievable
whether searched by upper case, lower case, or any combination.
2. If this is not possible, index them with indexing normalized to
upper case.
3. Lowest priority: index them with indexing normalized to lower
case.
Regardless of how they're indexed, our main concern is that every
search in the Pubnum index be done the same way.
Please let me know your thought on this. Thanks!
Sam Byrd
sbyrd@mit.edu
617-253-1782
P.S. Other than this, wow, we're done with the B.Index, aren't we?
