[IUG] Preferred searches email alerts

[Joanna Duy <joanna dot duy at concordia dot ca>]

Hi Judith-

We have been doing a fair bit of testing/tweaking on our preferred
searches and have discovered the following: When the search you put as a
preferred search brings up a number of records that is more than what
you have set in Max Target (in your Millennium Alert Option settings -
the default is 10,000, I think) you will get that "Your preferred search
is too broad" message. It also means, from my understanding, that the
system isn't checking all results of your search for new items. 

For example, we were testing this with a QA* call number search. If we
search QA* in our catalogue, we get 28,000 (approx) hits. Our Max Target
was set at 10,000. So we got the message "Your preferred search is too
broad". What we also think happens is that the system checks ONLY the
first 10,000 QA records for new items - so the reamining 18,000 are not
checked, meaning that we're not seeing all potential QA new books. 

We recently (this week) put our Max Target up to 32,000 and we'll get
our notices on Monday - we are hoping/expecting that a) the "Your
preferred search is too broad" message is gone and b) we may even see
more new books, because now it's searching the full set of items for the
new books instead of less than half. 

I hope this makes sense. I must say that the documentation on this in
the manual is not particularly clear, and my assumptions about how it is
using Max Target to do a scoop of records is one that I have surmised
for myself and from a posting on this list serv that made a similar
speculation,  but I have not seen it documented. And unfortunately,
there is no way to set a different Max Target on the staging and live
server, and then compare results. 

Best of luck!
Joanna Duy
-- 
Joanna Duy
Head, Periodicals and Media Services
Concordia University Libraries
Webster Library, LB 345
1400 de Maisonneuve West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ex. 7746
E-mail: joanna dot duy at concordia dot ca