I recently asked Cynthia Kiyotake for help in understanding the differences in search results when using the ALD web site vs. the Classic Catalog. Patrons - and I have noticed that when searching under "Books - Title" in the search bar at the top of the web site, MANY items are returned; the one we may be looking for can be pretty far down the list. When a "Title" search is done in the Classic Catalog, the item pops right up. Here's what Cynthia said:
On the website search when you choose books – title you are asking iii to do an advanced keyword search. So it is looking for “how” “to” “be” “lost” whenever it appears in a title field regardless of the order of the words, thus your getting so many results .
The catalog returns results looking in the title field database, and based on the same order you input, thus returning possibly different results than the website.
How to use the website search better?
For a title which has commonly used words like your example try putting the quotes around the title. This forces the search to keep the order.
Another tip is to add an author/actor/director if you know it so:
How to be lost ward is better than just how to be lost
Or
Up asner is much more concise than just a title search on up
Or even
Help stockett instead of just help
Funny--only two days ago I learned from Melissa Stock that a TITLE search is actually a KEYWORD search on the "new" ALD web site!
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't ask Melissa how to improve a search--thanks for passing along Cynthia's tips!
ReplyDeleteThanks Pamela, this is something I did not know until now. I thought a title search was an exact search. Now I know how to get around this problem!
ReplyDeleteTHanks Pamela. THis will be very helpful. I use the classic Catalog for most of my title search,and the title does pops right up.When I am looking up movies, for example. I put it under author,wayne, john. And in the classic catalog, it brings up all his movies in our database.
ReplyDelete