RE: [IUG] MSU live with WebPac Pro!

[Adam Brin <abrin at brynmawr dot edu>]

So, here's a question... I've heard many people say that patrons use
Keyword searching as their primary method for searching and I've seen many
users actually use searches for 'known item' searching.  What's
fascinating is that "Right Results" doesn't actually prefer an EXACT MATCH
of a title or uniform title above other results.  For example:

 Keyword: Ramayana
 Keyword: New York Times
 Keyword: Science

In all of these cases the thing the patron might want is not in the first
couple of records, in all but one, it's not on the first page of results.

Honestly, these are tough titles, but it would be nice if we had at least
a detailed (marc field) level of understanding on what relevancy means, as
well as ideally control.

- adam

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006, Edwards, Richard wrote:

> >In early March Michigan State University Libraries went live with
> WebPac Pro and Right Results!
> >If you are interested in looking at the new relevancy ranking for
> keyword searches, feel free to come here and take a look in a live
> database!
>
> Do you have any details as to how the relevancy is done?
>
> I did a keyword search for "dogs" in your catalog and found 648
> resulting records.
>
> Among the first three entries were "Pet lover's guide to natural healing
> for cats and dogs", "The finer points of sausage dogs" and "No dogs in
> heaven?"
>
> "Sausage dogs" is a humorous novel about a College teacher. "No Dogs in
> Heaven" is about the life of a veterinarian.
>
> And the "Pet lover's guide" appears to be #1 only because it's
> publication date is 2006 while the next dozen are from 2005 (including
> "Yellow dogs and Republicans", "Dogs of God" and "Diamond dogs") and
> then after that 2004 books.
>
> It appears that the relevancy ranking is taking the keyword list and
> sorting it by publication date without giving any weight to type of
> field (such as subject) or number of times the keyword appears within
> the record. For books published in the same year, it appears to rank
> them further by bibliographic record number with the newest at the
> bottom.
>
> Thank you for sharing the link to your catalog.
>
> Rich
>
> Rich Edwards
> Technical Services Program Manager
> Washington State Library
> PO Box 42460
> Olympia, WA 98504-2460
> redwards at secstate dot wa dot gov
> (360)704-7136
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
> [mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Nancy Fleck
> Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 10:16 AM
> To: IUG INNOPAC List
> Subject: [IUG] MSU live with WebPac Pro!
>
> In early March Michigan State University Libraries went live with WebPac
> Pro and Right Results! If you are interested in looking at the new
> relevancy ranking for keyword searches, feel free to come here and take
> a look in a live database! You can find us at
>
>     http://www.lib.msu.edu/
>
> There are still a few loose ends to tie up, but it is indeed there and
> working just fine. We hope to make more improvements to our OPAC using
> WebPac Pro. We have been beta testing this since mid-January but put it
> out for our patrons in March.
>
> I hope you like it as much as we do!
>
> Nancy
>
> Nancy W. Fleck
> Asst. Director for Technical Services
> 100 Library
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824-1048
> (517) 432-6123 x.152
> (5170 353-8969 (FAX)
>
>
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