Best terminology for OPAC searches?
John Kupersmith
jkup at jkup.net
Wed Sep 8 12:29:06 EDT 2004
Usability4Lib and Web4Lib members --
As part of a usability upgrade for Pathfinder, UC Berkeley's web-based
catalog, I'm looking for data on which terms are most widely understood by
users for certain key concepts:
(1) Keyword searches
Which is best:
Title or Title Keyword(s) or Title Words
or ...?
(2) Exact searches
Which is best:
Title (exact) or Title Phrase or Title begins with...
or ...?
(3) Designating a telnet version of the catalog
Which is best:
telnet or text-based or command-line or terminal-style
or ...?
There is plenty of literature on OPAC displays and design, but I've found
very little on the terminology used in the catalog.
Does anyone have actual test data on this, or know of catalogs whose
terminology may have been influenced by user testing?
Failing that, does anyone have strong anecdotal evidence ("we changed to
term X and reference interactions show that users understand this much
better") ?
If this inquiry turns up anything significant, I'll post it on
Library Terms That Users Understand
< http://www.jkup.net/terms.html >
--jk
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John Kupersmith jkup at jkup.net http://www.jkup.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reference Librarian http://www.lib.berkeley.edu
Doe/Moffitt Libraries
University of California, Berkeley
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