Re: SORT_BROWSE feature

["Craig Johnson" <CJOHNSON@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Your #4 is what has concerned us the most, but I checked in our staging
catalog where we have Brief Citations enabled and it appears that B.C.
causes things to work a bit differently. With Brief Citations, when you
sort an initial headings browse screen you are taken directly to a B.C.
list of all the titles associated with the search term sorted as
specified. I expect our patrons will be much happier with this. The main
loss I can see is that there is no longer any obvious connection on the
resulting title list between specific headings associated with the
specific titles, since the headings no longer display.

As to your #5, we were actually extremely impressed with the speed of
sorting and felt it was noticably faster than previous post-search
sorting.

Craig Johnson
Iowa City Public Library
cjohnson@xxxxxxxxxx

>>> duncanr@xxxxxxxxxx 10/14/03 03:08PM >>
Although the sorting works great, we played around with the SORT_BROWSE

wwwoption then decided to turn it off due to several interface 
issues.  (We're hoping/waiting for the next generation.)  Some of the 
issues which we think make the feature less than useful and/or
confusing 
for users follow.  (As usual, your mileage will undoubtedly vary.)

(1)  You can't alter the text used to describe the default sort
("System 
sorted"), and the current sort criterion is not reflected in the sort
drop 
down which appears on search results pages.  E.g., title search results

show "System sorted", not "Sorted by title";  since "Sorted by title"
will 
probably appear somewhere in the list of sort options, "system sorted"

implies something else was done.  The phrase "system sorted" barely has

meaning to most staff;  a random sampling of passersby, student
assistants, 
and librarians found it more confusing than helpful.  Thankfully, the
text 
which describes the configurable sort options is completely
customizable.

(2)  The SORT_BROWSE wwwoption applies only to index searches and
offers 
six different options (chronological, reverse chronological, call#,
title, 
author, and mat type).  The options are definitely welcome, but since 
keyword searching offers only two useful (IMO) sort options (alpha and

date) and they can't be selected from a results screen (as the index
sort 
can), there's an obvious inconsistency in functionality which makes
keyword 
searching appear not so "advanced".

(3)  The wwwoption cannot be applied selectively to index searches. 
Not a 
huge problem, but not all sorts are useful for all searches, e.g., in
our 
system a date sort of a journal title search is pretty useless (and 
misleading), but one we think users would often choose.

(4)  Sorted results display in whatever default mode (brief or
extended) is 
defined for the search type.  Some sorted results can be confusing if
the 
sort criterion is not part of the default display, e.g., an author
search 
sorted by title needs to have the title appear in order to make sense. 
If 
the title appears in the brief display and brief is the default for
author 
searches, then it's not a big deal, but if it only appears in the
extended 
display, another step is required to make sense of the results (and
there's 
no way to force the extended display just for sorted results).

(5)  Sorts of larger record sets seem to take "forever".  (Probably no

longer than a post-search limit, but it somehow feels like it takes 
longer.  This is probably a personal problem I will work hard to
overcome.)

(6)  Display screens for sorted results appear to be inconsistently
coded, 
e.g., table columns are resized out of whack as compared to non-sorted

displays, and even this seems to vary with the index searched.  Not a
huge 
deal in terms of functionality, but it can get kind of ugly.

Bob Duncan


~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Robert E. Duncan
Systems Librarian
David Bishop Skillman Library
Lafayette College
Easton, PA  18042
duncanr@xxxxxxxxxx 
http://www.library.lafayette.edu/  

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