======Summary of Search Focus Group Discussions====== The ideas contained on this page came from the four IRC focus group discussions conducted in March 2016 as well as in follow-up emails on the topic. =====What People Like About the Current Search===== * Facets for bibliographic data * Ability for search to handle diacritics properly * Ability to handle anchored searches (e.g. “^harry potter” to identify indexed fields that begin with “harry potter) * Autocomplete / autosuggest functionality that predicts search as the user types * The ability for Evergreen sites to create custom indexes * The ability to define search formats based on MARC fixed fields * Strong advanced search filtering – specifically copy location and format filtering * The ability to search a lot of MARC data in a keyword search - Keyword searching works very well for vast majority of searches due to good coverage of the record * Ability to search by ISBN in both numeric and keyword search. * Ability to search by barcode * Session-less searching, allows linking to search results * Separate scope and search depth ranging (i.e you can choose to search a particular location and then search at a depth (branch, system, consortium) in the context of that location) * Call number shelf browse =====Ideas for Improvements to Search===== * Improved speed * In general * When applying Copy location / format filters * When conducting broad searches. * Better balance between fuzziness and precision when records are retrieved based on word variations * Improving search retrieval/relevance through analysis of user behavior, handled in a way that respects user privacy * Improve relevance for data-rich, higher quality records so that similar records with less MARC data don't consistently rank higher than the longer records. * True blending of relevance factors, e.g. bib-relevance and popularity providing intelligent bumps that result in better relevance ranking. * Improve relevance for one-word titles * Autocomplete / autosuggest improvements * Improve relevance-ranking for suggested terms * Work properly with screen readers * Highlight matching terms with diacritics * Ability to search public copy notes * More flexibility in the types of facets that can be defined * pub date * formats * audience * fiction vs. non-fiction * language * Did You Mean? Suggestions * Improved speed for ingesting records * Improvements to zero-hit searches * Drops user into a browse search * Suggest a meaningful alternative search * Automatically launch a popular, similar search * No core limit to # of search results * When search hits maximum records that can be retrieved, it should inform the user not all results were retrieved and provide tips for narrowing the search. * Intermediate results screen in keyword searches that first show author / subject headings that matches terms entered in author/subject search, and then brings the user to results for that heading. * Leverage authority cross-references in keyword search results – related search * Ability to manually tweak metarecord groupings * Including prefixes in call number searching * More browse search options * Call number (on browse search page)' * Publisher * Date * Journal title * The ability to pull in external, linked data or canned information to the search results page that is related to the user's search terms. (Example: search for a celebrity on Google, info on the celebrity appears on the right.) * Search also retrieves public lists (bookbags) on the same topic. * Intuitive way for users to provide hints for type of material are more relevant (e.g. “for a paper” “for leisure reading” etc.) * Ability to have a non-keyword search that just sorts by format, location, and date (e.g. "give me the newest DVDs for my library") * Local synonym list / thesaurus * Catalog tells users which word variations were used in their search and gives them the choice to search the exact terms only. * Search augmented with external, curated disambiguation information / related, broader, narrower information. * Improve metarecord grouping / display so that “group formats and editions” search could be the main result set for most searches. * Ability to quickly jump from record to other formats/editions of same work * Using OCLC Work Entities to group metarecords * Ability for end user to toggle on/off "Search within contents and summary notes?". * True blending of relevance factors, e.g. bib-relevance and popularity providing intelligent bumps that result in better relevance ranking. * Single search across library materials, articles, digital repository objects, Overdrive, etc. * Highlighted search terms * The ability for the UI show why some records are more relevant than others (relevance scores? * Easier / more understandable to configure search. * New sort options for Date Created * Add ability to sort by shelving location in Shelf Browse * Search by prefix/suffix =====Suggested Improvements that Can Be Done With Configuration===== * Weighting for particular fields (title, main author) * Searching by collections (copy location groups?) * Sometimes need to use apostrophe to find the correct record (look at normalizers) * More popular titles floating higher (coming in 2.11) =====Factors to be Included in Relevance Ranking===== * Currency * # of copies * # of circs, holds (or other activity, popularity) * Specific fields are more important * Proximity of search terms * # of times search term appears in record =====Top Priorities for Improvement===== * Speed * Better balance between fuzziness / precision * Leveraging cross-references * Intermediate search screen for results * Improved relevance * Spelling assistance / Did You Mean? * Better blending of coverage density with other relevance factors (e.g. activity) * Make it more understandable to see why system is retrieving / ranking as it does (because then it's easier to adjust it.) =====Ideas for Non-Search Catalog Improvements===== * Improvements for saving and sharing lists * Easier list management, moving titles between lists * Usability / language improvements for facets on search results page. * Integrate GoodReads ratings into search results page * Carousel for new books