There have been times, in discussing plans for RedLightGreen, that we reminded ourselves that there are users who ask questions like these. While some of these are out of scope and some -- well, we don't have any books here -- there are some that point to the problems that new library users have. (Even if my image of a "new library user," in the generic sense, is a child under the age five.) And some of these point to problems of those who have poor memories (I'll count myself in that group.)
I am disappointed to find our current engine returns nothing on "Robert James Waller Waltzing through Grand Rapids" or on "Waltzing through Grand Rapids." (I have a slim chance of remembering a book title, and even slimmer chance of remembering a person's name.) "Waltzing Grand Rapids" returns seven books. Stemming is not enabled on this test engine, so i try "waltz grand rapids." "Grand Rapids" is found in the place of publication of many of these results, and, yet again, points to the need to remove that data from the keyword search. I recognize that there is no way the current system would really know that "Grand Rapids" and "Cedar Bend" are both rivers.
The "civil war" search won't help the student who assumes that they can write a paper about the whole war, although there are plenty of books about the US Civil war. It does have the functionality to help them discern that, "oh yeah, there have been other 'civil wars' than the one i had in mind." The disambiguation is not as useful as I'd hoped it would be, but it's a start, appropriate for a pilot system. The person who asked, "Can you tell me why so many famous Civil War battles were fought on National Park Sites," might pose a query to the RedLightGreen interface as "civil war national park." This does return some results -- National Park Service publications about the US Civil War -- although I'm not sure one would ever come across the answer to the particular question in a book.
My search on "time machines" entertained me a great deal and illustrated why stemming is a critical addition -- without stemming, HG Wells doesn't show up until result 55.
Enough entertainment for the day.
Posted by judielaine at August 5, 2003 05:32 PM | TrackBack