[Web4lib] question: use of tabbed search boxes on home page?

[Melissa Belvadi]

That's a really good meta-question, and I'd be also very happy to hear
what methodology anyone who did this used.

I was thinking mostly of known item searches. In the case of articles,
it's often pretty obvious if they typed in the title of a scholarly
article.

Similarly for books, it's sometimes obvious, or you could try searching
the strings that look like book titles into WorldCat to verify if they
are.
I could imagine a research project that spot-checked random entries in
the log that way, maybe a small percent.

Melissa

>>> On 4/3/2010 at 12:29 PM, "Walker, David" <dwalker at calstate.edu>
wrote: 
> I'm not sure how you would determine whether users are using the
wrong search 
> box for book or articles just by looking at the logs.  
> 
> It would be pretty obvious with something like a "journal list,"
since that 
> is a rather specialized search.  But I would expect users to type
essentially 
> the same types of queries -- topics -- into both the article and book
(catalog) 
> search boxes.
> 
> --Dave
> 
> ==================
> David Walker
> Library Web Services Manager
> California State University
> http://xerxes.calstate.edu
> ________________________________________
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On 
> Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi [mbelvadi at upei.ca]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 12:23 PM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: [Web4lib] question: use of tabbed search boxes on home
page?
> 
> Hi,
> We've noticed a big trend in academic library web sites is to layer
> several search boxes (eg catalogue search, journal a-to-z lookup,
> federated article search) in a tabbed box, usually with the catalogue
on
> 'top'.
> 
> We're wondering if anyone who uses this design has done either a
formal
> usability study or logfile analysis of the different search boxes to
> see:
> 1. are people typing the right kind of search into the right box?
> 2. how often anyone even notices the tabs to use anything underneath
> the top, default one? (aka is the top one getting searches that
belong
> in the others)?
> 
> At the moment, our own site has four (yes, four) search boxes
> essentially listed down the middle of the home page. Our recent
formal
> usability study is showing fairly conclusively that first year
students
> have absolutely no idea what the journal a-to-z lookup one is for
(and
> we don't have journal holdings in the catalogue, only in this), and
> changing the title or other verbiage above it doesn't seem to help.
> We're getting better results with the "Find Books" (catalogue) and
"Find
> Articles" (federated search) boxes and are worried that if we layer
the
> "find articles" underneath "find books" via that kind of tabbed
layout,
> that we'll end up seeing a lot of article searches in the catalogue.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> Melissa Belvadi
> Emerging Technologies & Metadata Librarian
> University of Prince Edward Island
> mbelvadi at upei.ca
> 902-566-0581
> 
> 
> 
> 
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