Try it! Keyword searching in Tripod
Notice anything different when you search Tripod these days? Thanks to your suggestions, we've made two changes to the default search of our favorite library catalog:
- The default search is a KEYWORD search, instead of a Title search. (You can switch back to a Title search via the drop-down menu.)
- The results will be presented in order of RELEVANCE, instead of by date. This should bring items with your keywords in the book's author or title to the top of the list; items with your search terms in the chapter authors or titles will be ranked lower.
As in a Google search, you can enter as many terms as you want, mixing author, subject, and title words as you please (e.g., andy warhol pop art). Use quotes to search for multiple words as a phrase (e.g., "pride and prejudice").
We hope that these changes will improve your experience with Tripod. Please give the new Tripod a try, and let us know what you think!
Comments
Ann Wheeler said on June 20, 2006 3:30 PM:[link to this]
With relevancy ranked search results, you lose the dates of items on the search results, which I think is a major draw-back. I've noticed students use dates a lot to quickly evaluate their search results, and scan for particular items.
John Anderies said on June 24, 2006 2:04 PM:[link to this]
My recent searches may not be typical of most users, but I miss having the results of my keyword searches sorted by date. In that I am often looking for the earliest or an early edition of something it was always easy to just go to the end of the list (since it was in reverse chronological order) and work backwards. It will take some practice to start doing these searches in the Advanced Tab (where I can specify sort by date) instead.
anna h. said on June 28, 2006 9:00 AM:[link to this]
Agreeing with Ann: it is really important to be able to see the date of a material without having to look at its record.
Ann Wheeler said on June 29, 2006 11:23 AM:[link to this]
A library staff person's perspective: In the few weeks that the default has been switched to keyword, I've noticed that about 90% of the time I am changing it back to Title. I use Tripod a lot in the course of my work (collection development, reference inventory, etc.) and I am always searching by title. Now for a student doing research, this may be different...
Arleen Zimmerle said on June 30, 2006 2:53 PM:[link to this]
I use title searching most of the time as well. Can something be set up for staff, so we can still default to title searching?
Michelle said on July 5, 2006 11:05 AM:[link to this]
Ann, if I'd been here last week I would have said the same thing! I never really thought about how often I'm doing title searches for my own work. I do know, however, that when I'm helping a student I tend to start with a keyword search. We really need some student perspective on this one.