Notes and suggestions from the Search/OPAC committee meeting on 9/3/2008

Subject Searching

• Subject search results would be more easily sifted through if they were listed by subject order (i.e. Follett’s; Dogs, Dogs—Andecdotes, Dogs—Behavior, etc.) instead of simple listing of short records.

• Side bars for searches by subject not good either. Search for “Candy” as subject brings up books and side bar topic links to “candidates.”  Search is still too fuzzy, seems to be searching for “cand*”.

• Subject hyperlinks within records are not working properly. Dogs—Training link brings up fiction books that have “trained” within the synopsis instead of only books with the same subject heading. Again seems to be searching for “train*” in any field.

Search Results, etc.

• Make “relevance” sorting the default for listing search results.  Still not great, but yields better results.  -- I went ahead and changed this so that the default is now set on 'relevance.' -Rose

• No way of offering information if it’s typed in wrong. Offer alphabetical listing of nearest results (i.e. Follett’s results for author “Sadeghi, Hassan” typed as “Sadehi” will bring you to alphabetical list of authors within a few lines of the correct spelling.) Or, offer “did you mean?” --I turned back on the fuzzy search, but I think some of the misspellings are not going to be caught. -Rose

• “Browse shelf” feature is not working. Would be great if it could.

• Offer “advanced search” as a default option in set up.

Icons and Links

• Make log out and return to account clearer (upper left) by using larger font and change “Welcome Jane Smith” to “Jane Smith’s Account.”

• Take out RSS feed link. --I tried the RSS feed out tonight and it feeds a list of specific search results into my feed reader (I use Google Reader), which works fine, but I'm not sure how important it is to us or our patrons at this point. - Rose

• Icons offered are not great, especially large print.  Can we have more in offering? Need clear icons for basics like book, large print, magazine, audiobook, music and video.

• Create easy fill-in-the-blank forms for creating reading lists linked to icon and sidebar hyperlinks on front page of catalog which go to a search results type list so that patron can read synopsis and see check-in status. (Similar to Stow-Munroe Fall Public Library)

• Remove links to WorldCat, online bookstores, etc.

Patron Account

• Time out patron log-in after period of no use (1-2 minutes) so that someone else is less likely to access their account if someone forgets to log out.

• Add print and email function to private and public lists.

Here are a few links discussing guidelines for search and usabilty of Web pages:

http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter17.pdf (PDF Warning)

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html

http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/technology/search/bestpractices.shtml