[13562] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Searching the electronic catalog
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Blazej Feret)
Mon Oct 9 08:57:36 2000
Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 23:21:49 +0200
From: Blazej Feret <blzferet@SUNLIB.P.LODZ.PL>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
Message-Id: <39DE426D.5AEFF903@library.p.lodz.pl>
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Thank you very much to all, who replied to my question and especially
to Walt Crawford for valuable comments:
> Roughly 40% of searches are Keyword searches
> Roughly 50% searches are Author, Subject, and Title searches,
> and those are roughly equal--with slightly fewer Title searches
> than Author or Subject. [Say 17-18% each for Author and Subject,
> 14-15% for Title].(Note that, for Eureka, Author, Subject, and
> Title can include both true headings searches and word searches,
> but word searches in these three categories make up only a small
> portion of all searches, typically 5% or less). Roughly 10% of
> searches use "other" indexes--journal names, abstracts,
> specialized indexes for special databases.
The question on how users are doing searches wasn't asked without
a purpose. Imagine, you would like to set up a union catalog for
a group of libraries. Part of candidate libraries use a kind of
coherent system for authority entries and subject headings while
the other use only locally defined, "uncoherent" entries. Most of
the cataloging is being done from scratch for there is no place to
take ready-made records from. The new system is planned to be both:
the source of correct and unified authority and bibliographic records
for participating libraries and as the main information source on (as
many as possible) library holdings.
The question is whether to allow in the new system records from
"non-coherent" libraries for the good of large holding information
or restrict the system only to the "coherent" libraries for the good
of the information/database consistency and quality of the records.
I feel it like this: if most of the searches are done by keywords
or people search for a specific book knowing author/title
(or even ISBN as Denise said), the consistency and "purity" of the
database may be sacrificed and records from "non-coherent" libraries
should be accepted. Otherwise, we should built strictly
authority-controlled system sacrifying some of the data from libraries
that have their records only with "local" ("uncoherent") authority
entries.
I am sure the situation is not that simple as I suggest, but having
more data on the users' preferences would help to make a decision
better for them. Any suggestions are welcome.
Blazej Feret
Main Library
Technical University of Lodz
Lodz, Poland
blzferet@library.p.lodz.pl
