[WEB4LIB] RE: Two steps forward, three steps back

Jimm Wetherbee jimm at wingate.edu
Wed Dec 22 09:28:48 EST 2004


Bill,

[you wrote]

| 
| If your consortium had chosen ALEPH, you would not be having the
| problems you see.  ALPEH has its peculiarities but its searching and
| indexing for keyword is quite good.
[--jimm replies] 

I tried all but one of Stacy's queries on our Endeavor system in the same
manner as she describe and was quite successful.  The only reason I didn't
attempt one (the exact title search) is because it is an option we
deliberately left off.  I was also somewhat confused by the comments on
keyword searching.  Endeavor makes a distinction between a command search
(which uses Boolean logic, and is aimed at those of us who still remember
running BRS and Dialog from a terminal) and a keyword search (which does
not).  It is possible that her local system admin relabeled the command
search as "keyword," but if so, that is hardly a vendor issue at all.

--jimm
| 
| Bill Drew
| drewwe at morrisville.edu
| 
| > -----Original Message-----
| > From: web4lib at webjunction.org
| > [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Stacy Pober
| > Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 5:40 PM
| > To: Multiple recipients of list
| > Subject: [WEB4LIB] Two steps forward, three steps back
| >
| >
| > Here are some search examples that fail and what Voyager wants to see:
| >
| >   Failed basic "Find Keyword" search:  death of a salesman
| >   Working version: death and of and a and salesman
| >    (User MUST use boolean connectors even though it is explicitly a
| >    keyword search)
| >
| >   Failed advanced "Find in Keyword Anywhere" search: war and peace
| >   Working version: war peace
| >     (Using boolean connectors in this search ensures the search
| >      will fail)
| >
| >   Failed advanced "Find in Title" search: lion, the witch,
| > and the wardrobe
| >   Working version: lion, the witch, the wardrobe
| >    (Again, system chokes when finding unexpected boolean "and")
| >
| >   Failed advanced "Find in Title": kings and desperate men
| >   and
| >   Failed basic "Find in Title, Exact": kings and desperate men
| >   Working version: kings & desperate men
| >     (Users must use ampersand if it is part of the title.
| > System does not
| >     know how to alias "and" and "&".
| 
| 
| ---
| [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]




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