This presentation was done by Karen Schneider which was done virtually and was about the Librarian’s Internet Index. I’ve been hoping to see Karen present and this was another reason to go. The presentation focused on the change of LII to Lucene which is still forthcoming. Some notes:
Users expect full text search Most don't use boolean (including librarians) Most don't do boolean well (including librarians) Quite a few use quoted searches Very few use advanced search (including librarians) and those that do usually use it as a help page to see what can be searched White space can help with results Dropped LCSH - most was used poorly In testing search engines reused actual search queries of various types (boolean, misspellings, simple, advanced) Always test a non-beta version of vendor software Use testers only once - tainted from then on Turn off rank number - just confuses - relevant results should be at top, doesn't matter what number you assign Faceted search is useful Keeping browse and search together was a major driver for the change in search technology While my notes are short it was a worthwhile presentation, especially if you were doing testing of products.
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