Re: [IUG] Search Results and Relevancy

["Pruntel,Alison" <Alison dot Pruntel at fauquiercounty dot gov>]

Hi Bob,

 

Thanks for the feedback. I guess this is the trade off for enhanced
access to short stories, items w/in collected works, etc. I think it was
this particular title, "The Delinquent Virgin," coming up first that got
some staff riled up/brought to my attention.  ;-)

 

Happy holidays,

 

Alison

------------------------------

 

Message: 9

Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:06:13 -0500

From: Bob Duncan <duncanr at lafayette dot edu>

Subject: Re: [IUG] Search Results and Relevancy

To: IUG INNOPAC List <innopac at innopacusers dot org>

Message-ID: <auto-000014415546 at lafayette dot edu>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

 

At 10:44 AM 12/18/2007, Alison Pruntel wrote:

>. . .

>When I do a title search in our catalog

>(http://innopac.fauquiercounty.gov/) for Little Women, I get the brief 

>display w/various records 

>(http://innopac.fauquiercounty.gov/search/t?little+women). If I click 

>on the first in the list, with the 11 entries, you'll see that what 

>would seem less relevant items are at the top of the list. In this 

>case, The Delinquent Virgin just happens to have a chapter entitled 

>"Little women." Can someone enlighten me on where this is controlled, 

>what I can do to fix this? I'm not sure if it has to do with our
indexing or what.

>It looks like the results are listed alphapbetically (title) before 

>relevancy. I am not sure if this is related to our Advanced Searching:

>Ranking Options (page #101916), since this isn't using Advanced Search.

>And with those, I checked and ours are set as DAR (date, alpha, 

>relevance). I noticed that we have adjacency search turned off, too. 

>Our SORT_BROWSE WWWOption is set to t:title|a:Author|c:Year|r:Reverse

>Year|m:Material Type, if that matters.

> 

>Of course, we're supposed to have WebPAC Pro installed sometime today, 

>so maybe this is won't still be the case.

 

 

It will still be the case, because relevance has nothing to do with
either of the screens you describe.  When you do a title search, you're
searching the title index, and the result is usually an index browse (in
this case, a list of indexed titles that begin with the string "little
women").  Little Women appears at the top of this list not by virtue of
being more relevant than the others, but because it's the first
(alphabetically) entry in the title index that satisfies the search.

 

When you click the link to Little Women, you're in a record browse, and
the default sort for a record browse following an index search is
alphabetical by the main title.  The Delinquent Virgin comes first
because it's the first 245 (alphabetically) of the records that have
"little women" in a title field.

 

Note that in the WebPAC (Pro or Classic), so-called relevance only comes
into play with keyword searches.

 

Bob Duncan

 

 

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~

Robert E. Duncan

Systems Librarian

Editor of IT Communications

Lafayette College

Easton, PA  18042

duncanr at lafayette dot edu

http://www.library.lafayette.edu/

Alison Pruntel 
Electronic Resources Librarian 
Fauquier County Public Library 
11 Winchester Street 
Warrenton, VA 20186 
540-349-2770 (voice) 
540-349-3278 (fax) 
http://library.fauquiercounty.gov 
http://fcpleresources.blogspot.com/ 

 



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