Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Comparison of Boolean Searching in the Old vs. New Catalog

Basic Overview of Boolean Searching in our Catalog
One of the nice features of our catalog is its ability to use Boolean Operators such as AND, OR and NOT. By default, our catalog's keyword searches combine all the words you enter with AND. So, if you choose a Subject Keyword search and type Washington state, the catalog looks for subjects that contain the word Washington and the word state. However, let's say we were searching for books about cake or candy. An easy way to do this is to click on Advanced. Then, in the first drop down box, choose Subject Keyword and enter the word cake. Change the right drop down box from AND to OR. On the second line, choose another Subject Keyword search and this time enter the word candy. Click the red arrow to submit the search. You can see the results here.

Since we're using the same search index for both words, we can also do this search on the Basic Search page. Click on Basic and choose the Subject Keyword index. Then, in the text box, type cake OR candy1 and click the red arrow. This gives us exactly the same results as the Advanced Search did.

Unfortunately, the catalog doesn't have an order of precedence for its operators (AND, OR, NOT). So, when searching with multiple words, it's best to enclose each group of words with parenthesis2. For example, if I were looking for books by Dan Brown or James Patterson, I would choose an Author Keyword search and then type (Dan Brown) OR (James Patterson) and click the red arrow.

Using the Advanced Search, let's try a Title Keyword search for "Trophy Wife". Leave the Boolean Operator as AND. Next to Author Keyword, type (Diana Diamond) – make sure to include the parenthesis – and click the red arrow to search. This search will return all records that have the phrase Trophy Wife in the title where the author's name contains the words Diana Diamond. Click the Refine Search link to go back. This time, instead of AND, change the operator on the first line to OR and click the red arrow to search. This will return all titles that include the phrase Trophy Wife (regardless of author) and all books that Diana Diamond has written. Refine the search again and this time choose NOT. This will return all books that have the title phrase Trophy Wife that are not written by Diana Diamond. Here are the results. The last Boolean choice is the XOR. This is a funny one. When you search with the XOR it will return all books that include the title phrase Trophy Wife and all books that are written by Diana Diamond except for the books with the title Trophy Wife written by Diana Diamond (see the results).

Features and Bug Fixes in the New Catalog

1) In our current catalog, it doesn't matter whether Boolean Operators are entered in upper or lowercase. However, this means that it can't tell when the word NOT is used as part of a title or as a search command. As a result, searching for the book Size 12 is Not Fat by Meg Cabot fails because it is looking for all titles that have the words Size 12 but NOT the word fat in the title. The new version of our catalog fixes this problem. In order for the catalog to recognize a word as a boolean operator, it must be in all uppercase. Thus, if you search in our new catalog for Size 12 is NOT Fat the search still fails because NOT is all in capitals and thus is used as a search command. However, searching for Size 12 is Not Fat works as a normal borrower might expect. Note: Because of this change, it is best not to type in all caps when searching the new catalog since this would mean you're telling the catalog to use NOT as an operator.

2) It use to be that the catalog did not automatically group words in the same search box together. When using the AND operator, it doesn't matter. However, if you use any of other three operators, OR, NOT or XOR, you way not retrieve the results you wanted. For example, let's say I would like to retrieve all books titled To the Last Man that were not writter by Zane Grey. I might be tempted to do a Title Keyword for "To the Last Man", choose NOT, and then an Author Keyword for Zane Grey. You can see that no results are retrieved. However, if do the exact same search by put parenthesis around Zane Grey's name, I can see that there is a book by Jeff Shaara that matches my search query. Happily, this has changed in the new catalog. Once we switch to the new catalog in most cases it won't matter whether or not you group words together using parenthesis. NOTE: If you are using Boolean Operators from the Basic search page, it is still best to use parenthesis to group words together.

3) The new catalog has another bug fix dealing with Boolean Operators. Let's say I wanted to refine a search that used the NOT operator. In our current catalog, when you click Refine Search it sets all the boolean operators back to AND even if your previous search was using something different. This annoyance has been fixed in our new catalog.

4) In our current catalog, the only way to indicate that you want to exclude words from a search result was to type NOT. However, now you can also use - to indicate the catalog should exclude some results. This is similar to how you exclude words when using Google. For example, let's say that I want to find the book It Happened One Autumn but I don't want the large print copy to show up. Performing a Title Keyword search for "It Happened One Autumn" -large will return my desired result. Note: There is no space between the dash and the word you wish to exclude.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Requesting Books Without Any Items

Ideally, every bib record in our catalog would list items that borrowers could request or checkout. However, sometimes a search will return a bib record that doesn't show any items. This occurs for one of two reasons:

  1. "Lost" or "missing" items are hidden from the public catalog. Thus, if all items for a particular record are lost or missing, no items will be shown.
  2. We no longer own any items for that particular resource. This happens when the library deletes items either because they have been lost or missing long enough they are unlikely to be returned or because the items are old or damaged and should be removed from the collection.

In the first situation, when a borrower tries to request the resource, the catalog will say, "This title is not available for requests." While this may not be the clearest message, it at least says that the item can't be requested.

However, in the second situation the catalog will say, "Visit the full bib page: All the items in this bib are bookable1. Book a copy of this bib from the full bib page." This is due to a bug in our catalog. These items no longer exist in our system and so they cannot be requested or checked out.

In both cases, the best way to borrower the resource is by submitting an interlibrary loan request in order to borrow the item from another library outside our district.

1What is a "bookable item?" This is a catalog module that allows borrowers to reserve library materials for a specific date and time. It is most often used in an academic library setting for resources located in closed stacks. None of the High Plains Library District's collections are bookable.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Preview the New Catalog

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are working on testing a new version of our catalog software. For the most part, this version looks the same as our old version. However, there are some new features and bug fixes which I will explain in greater detail in later posts.

If you want a sneak peek of our new patron catalog, click here. IMPORTANT: At the moment, this is just a test system. You will not receive any requests you place in the test catalog. Also, any items you add to "My List" in the test catalog may be deleted without notice. To make requests or add items to "My List," please visit our current catalog at http://catalog.mylibrary.us/.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Notice: Catalog Unavailable Friday, May 14 from 8:00-10:00 AM

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog and all Requests

WHEN:
Friday, May 14, 2010 from 8:00-10:00 AM

WHY:
Troubleshoot a problem with the catalog last Friday

DETAIL:
Last Friday, May 7, the catalog unexpectedly stopped working. I have done some preliminary investigation but need to work on the problem more this Friday in order to prevent the system from going down again.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Catalog Updates

SirsiDynix, our integrated library systems vendor, has released a new version of Horizon. This release of Horizon requires that we upgrade our database, staff client, public catalog, reporting tool and more. In addition, our server hardware is near end of life so we will also be replacing our physical hardware. In short, it's a very major upgrade. We want to take advantage of the improvements in this release but also want to make sure we don't run into any unexpected problems.1.

Upgrade Timeline

  • In late April the hardware for the new server arrived and was prepared for the install of the newest version of Horizon.
  • Last week, SirsiDynix installed the newest version of Horizon on our server.
  • As soon as I have verified that the system is stable, I will let staff test the new public interface. I expect that this will probably happen sometime next week.
  • During the rest of the summer I, along with other library staff, will work on thoroughly testing each component of the new software. We want to make sure that all the functionality we currently have continues to work correctly in the new version.
  • In November, after we have made sure the new system is good, we plan to move all the data from our current system to the new software. We are scheduled to do this while the library in closed in hopes of minimizing the inconvenience to our staff and library borrowers.

1A little bit of history: Back in the summer of 2004 SirsiDynix released the now infamous Horizon Information Portal (HIP) 4.0. Fortunately, we did not upgrade at that time. However, some of the libraries that did upgrade claimed to be down for weeks trying to get the catalog to work correctly. The release we will be upgrading to is built on the much more stable HIP 3 series instead of the now defunct HIP 4 series. In any event, it is still very important that we thoroughly test this new software to make sure it meets the needs of both our staff and library borrowers.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Notice: Catalog Unavailable for Next Hour (May 2, 2010)

IMPACTED SERVICE:
Public Library Catalog and all Requests

WHEN:
Sunday, May 2, 2010 from 7:30-8:30pm

WHY:
Preparation for new catalog server

DETAIL:
We are working on creating a replacement computer server for our catalog and testing a new version of our software. This outage is to copy system settings from the old server to the new server in order to provide a duplicate test environment.