[816] in ad-lib
series searching
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sbyrd@MIT.EDU)
Mon Jun 12 17:04:52 1995
From: sbyrd@MIT.EDU
To: opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 17:04:24 EDT
Now that we're all mapped out, I thought I'd re-open another topic
that was going on last week: series searching. To summarize where I
think the discussion got to:
1. Jennie and Margo suggested eliminating SE= and SEW= from the main
menu, instead adding <series searching> as a menu option, there
prompting the user to use W= for series title and NW= for volume no.
2. Pat asked, Why use NW= at all when W= does the same thing?
3. Margo responded: "I thought that a W= search with keyword(s) _and_
the volume number might retrieve too many records because the number
would come from all the fields, whereas putting the number into a NW=
search would narrow it down. Jennie and I were concerned that
limiting a search to SEW= can exclude titles."
I think this last concern is definitely a valid one, because of
series/serials overlaps.
I also think, though, that just a W= search without using the NW= is
just too broad a search and will retrieve more useless hits than
useful ones. (Based on our discussions at the last opac meeting, Carol
Schildhauer would disagree with me here.)
Here's my suggestion: for the <series searching> option, prompt the
user to use NW= for volume number and TW= for title searches. This
is narrow enough to take full advantage of what indexing the series
volume numbering in the NW index does for us, and broad enough to
capture all titles, not just series titles (the TW search includes
series titles as well as "regular" titles).
(Just for the record, I think SEW= and SE= searches have limited use
anyway. We didn't ask for these per se; they came with the system.
In some cases they may be useful, especially for catalogers, but the
search does narrow the range more than is useful for most users.)
--Sam
