[WEB4LIB] How are people using your "Site Search"?

[Karen Harker]

Yes, we have looked at our logs carefully and determined that about 1/3 were for known items (mostly books & journals), 1/3 were subject searches of a biomedical nature, and 1/3 were subject searches of miscellaneous/bad searches.

Towards that end, we have purchased Encompass to help us integrate our resources; until this is live, we are doing some jerry-rigged cross-resource searching.  For one thing, our "Search the Library" produces a page w/three sections: Ejournals, Web Resources, and "the rest" (static HTML files).  Similarly, we are gradually implementing a function that passes a string to the OPAC.  Here users do "enter" the OPAC, so it may be a bit confusing for the less sophisticated users, but it does provide good added-value.



>>> Blake Carver <carver.50 at osu.edu> 2/18/02 1:52:23 PM >>>
Is anyone else is keeping a log of what search terms people are entering in 
your "Site Search". I recall a "how to" thread a few weeks back, but I 
don't see any discussion on what visitors are using our site-only search 
engine for, or how they are misusing it.

I've been keeping track here at OSU for a few months now, and there is no 
doubt in my mind people are NOT differentiating between a site search and a 
search of our OPAC, or a database search.
People see "search", and think they can just search for anything. This 
makes sense from a users point of view, why would someone be able to search 
the library site and not be able to turn up some books? It may seem silly 
to us, but this is how people are looking at our sites, they see the 
library, and they want to search for a book.

I changed our search screen to state explicitly that our site search is not 
looking for books, etc... about a month ago, and it doesn't seem to have 
helped.

So, are you watching the logs, what have you seen, and have you found a way 
to help users get pointed  in the right direction?

Some recent examples:
  how many libraries are there at OSU
  the history of the columbiana county courthouse in Lisbon Ohio
  Am searching for Howard Johnson who migrated to the united states in 1995-96
Books in Spanish Christian Cultural Anthropology
McCarthyism during Cold War dealing with actors and actresses

------------------------------------------
Blake Carver
Web Librarian
The Ohio State University Libraries
carver.50 at osu.edu
See Also:
   http://www.lisnews.com



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