[IUG] Encore and authority records

[Martha Sanders <msanders at etal dot uri dot edu>]

At IUG, I talked with Dinah Sanders, the Encore product manager, 
about what III's plans are regarding authority records in the Encore 
environment.  As others have pointed out, keyword searching just 
looks for terms in bibliographic, not authority, records.  As an 
authority control junkie, this was quite disturbing to me.  She 
explained (and I'm paraphrasing), that III's research showed that 
most catalog users need to refine their searches far more often than 
broaden them, so Encore is designed to help with the refinement 
process.  It appears to do this really well in the test searching 
I've done in other libraries' catalogs.  Dinah felt that future 
iterations of the Encore platform would include ways to broaden 
searches and that authority records could be a key component in that 
process.  We imagined a second 'tag cloud' presenting terms from 
related authority records (such as 'all-terrain cycling') to the 
searcher, for instance.  I hope that III moves in this direction 
sooner rather than later.

--Martha

Martha Rice Sanders
Knowledge Management Librarian,
The HELIN Consortium
401-874-4951
msanders at etal dot uri dot edu


At 12:31 PM 12/17/2007, Marty Jenkins wrote:
> "> Having "mountain biking" as a see reference doesn't help people 
> using keyword..."
>
> Begging the question: why aren't authority records exposed to 
> keyword searching?
>
> Martin Jenkins
> Head, Technical Services
> Wright State University Libraries
> 3640 Col. Glenn Hwy
> Dayton OH 45435
> martin dot jenkins at wright dot edu  (937)775-4983