Designing Search: Effective Search Interfaces for Academic Library Websites

Academic libraries customize, support and provide access to myriad information systems, each with complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The number of possible information entry points on an academic library Web site is both daunting to the end user and consistently challenging to library Web site designers. Faced with the challenges inherent in designing online search interfaces and the ever-growing amount of resources available online, VCU Libraries sought to explore how to build effective search interfaces that, at the same time, support a wide variety of computer users and provide comprehensive access to assorted collections of electronic resources. Over a 9 month period, the Libraries designed, implemented and tracked the usage of 2 different search interfaces on their homepage. Each interface allowed the user to choose between 4 different search targets. In this case study, the authors discuss the complexities of designing search interfaces, outline findings from the 9 month study, evaluate the effectiveness of the 2 interface designs and about talk about future research in these areas

Kinda Just Like Google: Presence and variety of search options on library homepages

In order to take the temperature of the academic library community with regard to external search boxes, the authors visited 111 academic ARL Library web sites on October 9th, 2007. In visiting each homepage, a record was kept detailing the presence and type of search boxes appearing at the top level. The resulting data paints an interesting portrait of diverse approaches, congruencies, and innovation. Globally this measure strikes to the core of current technological challenges with library search and web site design

Accessing Information Based on a Combination of Document Structure and Content: Exploiting XML tags in indexing and searching to enhance content retrieval of online document-centric XML encoded texts

This study explores the challenges of using traditional information retrieval methods to retrieve document-centric XML encoded text. It demonstrates how coupling structure and content in query and index formulation improves retrieval performance. Native XML database (NXD) and search engine technologies were evaluated in a baseline experiment, and in a second test after alterations were made to their respective indexes. Documents were retrieved for simple and complex forms of 30 XPath and keyword queries from a corpus of 95 XML/TEI encoded texts. Overall results indicated that query augmentation using document structure improves retrieval performance. Complex queries submitted to the NXD produced the most satisfying results, with an average precision of 93.3% and an average recall of 86.3%. Performance improvements were also achieved using complex, structured queries and indexes in the search engine. Study findings suggest that effective XML retrieval models might result from a combination of unstructures and structured retrieval techniques

Location, location, location: A transaction comparison of catalog searches originating from the library homepage and Aleph

Jimmy Ghaphery, Head, Library Information Systems, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU); Thomas McNulty, Integrated Library Systems Librarian, VCU; Susan Teague-Rector, Web Applications Manager, VCU. We will analyze several weeks of search terms from February 2009 in order to determine how different points of entry impact user searches. Specifically we will compare user searches originating from a search tool on the library homepage and searches originating directly from Aleph. This session should be of interest to those who are involved with usability and OPAC design as well as system administrators tasked with measuring OPAC activity