Quick Start Search Box
September 20, 2006
On the default view of our library homepage there is no search box. This creates a situation where a user must click before they can begin to search on their topic of interest. It also forces users to choose what kind of format they are looking for – journal or book.
We are developing a search box to be located on the first page that will be immediately available when the page loads and will search across the library catalog as well as all the databases that can be searched simultaneously (journals). A sample of the search box can be found at http://www.lib.byu.edu/index_refresh.php (Note: This page is under active development. Functionality may be intermittent.)
I don’t think library patrons understand “web-featable.” We ought to spell out for them what this means by saying something like “the library catalog as well as all the databases that can be searched simultaneously” or something to that effect.
I hope some library users take a look at this and comment on the blog. If they don’t, I hope we recruit some of them to take a look at it and give us feedback.
Having looked at the prototype, here are my comments.
1. I like that it is set off and that the color is different enough to grab attention.
2. I’m concerned that the default in the subject drop-down is “Accounting.” If we don’t want the patrons to have to choose something, it should, in my opinion, default to “General Search” since this page has databases that cover virtually all subject areas.
3. I like that we’re not getting rid of any of the current functionality on the Web page, just adding to it.
4. I think it would be good (at least for a user test) to add 3 radio buttons to the search – one for “Articles & Books,” one for “Articles,” and one for “Books.” If we were to do this, I think the “Articles & Books” option should be the default. This would include the Library Catalog along with article databases.
Agreed on the library users.
Also, I’ll have Brent look at adding those optios. I agree. I think they would be very useful. And I’ll switch the default to be “General”.
Actually, I forgot the sub list is loaded dynamically so I’ll see if Brent can set that as the default.
A definite improvement over webfeat for the really general searches. I still prefer to search specific databases that are more subject oriented and this will further push students away from using the more specific databases.
John,
By having the search box default to “General” it gives the novice searcher or someone doing a multi-disciplinary topic a place to start, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from choosing a specific subject to search as they do now under “Find Articles”. So we don’t feel that it would push students away from the more specific databases, as choosing a subject will take them to the same page as under “Find Articles”.
I agree with John. This is an improvement of the general webfeat search. However, I believe the current design will not only push students away from more detailed searches in specific databases but it moves them further away from the already buried (three clicks away) subject page that will give them more search help and subject librarian contact information.
If we are going to have a ‘quick start search’, I recommend that a bold, distinct link to the corresponding subject page be placed on the search results page.
At last months collection forum almost every subject librarian raised their hand to indicate their disapproval of webfeat. Why are we continuing to promote this on our homepage?
“So they’re trying to make it more useful. What’s the problem with that?”
I like the idea of having a link back to the subject page on the quick search results page. Is that possible Jacob? (Jacob is the library’s lead programmer)
I understand the subject librarians don’t like WebFeat (the technology behind the Quick Search box that allows us to search certain databases simultaneously). But it is the best (only) tool we have right now to get the job done. It is what we have and so we are moving forward with the tools at hand. I look forward to the day we can switch to something that is faster, more customizable and returns relevancy ranked results by default. (You can sort by relevancy now but you have to wait for the initial results to come back first.)
Thank you for your feedback.
I have to say that when I come to the library homepage, I don’t generally come looking for journal articles. I come looking for books. And by that I mean I come looking for this link, but in the alphabetical mode, because the keyword mode for some reason doesn’t prefer exact matches… Anything that would bring the ability to search using that particular catalog without having to click three times to get to it to the front page is good, in my book.
Hi Paul. Thank you for your feedback.
The Quick Search box includes library catalog results in the search. Are you saying that these results are satisfactory or are you asking for another solution to that problem?
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
I’ve been advocating a single search box (i.e. googlesque) for years and finally, it has made it through the webteam’s serious consideration! I’ve suggested this twice or more already dating back two iterations of the the lirbary page but has been vetoed.
The real purpose of this is to take a lost patron, lost meaning don’t know where to start on their research, and use this single search box (from the main page) to the resource that is available to them. Once taken to the proper resource, the researcher can then hone in on those dbs in that particular area of study. It actually serves as a “gateway” only that leads them to the right subjects and areas of expertise.
A good example is the topic on “OpenURL”. When I was researching this topic for a paper about 4 years ago, I didn’t have a clue where to find the resource that would talk about it. Is it Library Science? (which we don’t have a pull down for btw), is it some sort of Information Technology?, Computer Science? or what? Having a single box like that which concurently searches all possible dbs possible (including the catalog) without degrading performance is really the way to go and will serve a majority of researchers in this library. For those seasoned researchers, I’m sure they already know where to go and how to navigate our pages and might not need this type of service but then again, they are the minority. But there may be days that this will be a benefit to the serious researcher as well.
Thank you once again for considering this option.
– Purpose of the “Beta” Page –
The goal in setting up this library website “Beta” page is to collect feedback regarding new concepts and proposed changes to the web page. The intent is to publicize the Beta page broadly and to make the “Feedback” link prominent and easy to use (allowing a “Thumbs Up” vs “Thumbs Down” response).
All this is meant to invite broad input from library users. The goal is to collect data regarding proposed changes so that decisions will be based on users’ thoughts and opinions, rather than on assumptions of what they think. This will serve as only one source of feedback, but hopefully it will become a significant source.
If the quick search box includes the library catalog results in its result set, I’m plenty happy with that.
Good job!
On behalf of the Social Sciences/Education Department, I am writing to express our collective concerns about two aspects of the Quick Start federated searching option. First, many in the Department are not convinced that federated searching is the optimal option on the first screen of the Library homepage. Second, there are subjects, such as Anthropology, which do not have databases amenable to federated searching; thus, if a student selected Quick Start for an anthropology search she would receive no results or, worse, bad results, and we think this is contrary to patron service. Inasmuch as Quick Start is still in beta testing, we hope these comments can be leveraged into product improvement. Many thanks.
I appreciate the need for a nice, one-stop shopping search field on the homepage. I even like the way it’s set up, given the radio buttons already mentioned, etc. I especially like the suggestion for a prominent link directing people to the deeper resources of the subject page. What I fear is that we don’t have the tools to execute this concept satisfactorily, i.e. webfeat.
After we’ve taken a small look at technologies like AquaBrowser, aren’t we convinced that there’s something better than webfeat out there? Something that will actually search all our resources and sort them in a reasonable manner?
One of the problems with google is that people assume that by using it they’re searching the entire web, which is far from true. I fear that with this quick search, people will assume they’re searching all of our resources. When many of our best resources aren’t being searched at all, or are being hidden in some reasonless hit list, the patron will be disappointed by the first five things webfeat lists, and assume the library doesn’t have anything useful for them.
At that point, they’ll go back to what they know. Google.
The purpose of the Quick Start search box is to enable macro-to-micro information retrieval. That is, patrons can search resources without first having to choose a subject (defaults to ‘General Search’) or format (book or article), all within the context of the library homepage. Within this scope, Quick Search achieves it’s intended goal.
I accept that WebFeat has weaknesses. That is why incorporating contact info for reference desks and subject librarians and a link back to the subject librarian page is a good idea (thanks Julie!). We will pursue including this information in the search results. As the opportunity to test AquaBrowser and/or federated search utilities with our users becomes available, we will do so. Today, we are moving forward with the tools we have. As always, user response and on-going internal dialogue will influence where we go from here.
Having said all this, I am interested to know what immediate solutions anyone sees to specific problems. Currently, I am confused about the note about Anthropology. I did a search for ‘crime’ after selecting ‘Anthropology and Archaeology’ from the dropdown list. It returned several thousand results. I then performed another search for ‘18th century crime’. The results were still in the thousands and had high relevancy to the terms searched.
The point is not to give patrons one stop shopping in their research especially if the one stop is bad. The point is to give them good resources and help them to learn how to do research. Advocating more use of the actual people who work in the library or as Julie Williamsen said the use of the subject pages would be more effective than continuing to perfect the pretty colors of a defective by nature search engine. You cannot put all of these databases together. Our catalog will use completely different search terms than another (not to mention truncation etc.). All the students will recieve is one or two bad articles (thus making them think that is all that can be found in these databases) rather than finding many more by using each database individually. We need a big bold sign on the front page that says go to the subject pages or go to the reference desk. I work at Humanities Reference and I know from experience that everytime a patron has used webfeat they are never getting the results comparable to when I show them how to really research. Also they get really confused about how to access the article since Webfeat doesn’t tell them. So many patrons say they should have asked us in the first place instead of wasting time bumbling around with Webfeat. Why are those who are trained to help with research even here if we are just going to spend money on giving the students inferior help?
Waste of time. Most student can’t get the information they need from this link They need to actually go in the the databases anyway.
They can’t link into the data bases from this page. Also the “view” link does not work. Most students think the “view” link will take them to the full text. They usually come to the desk saying “the link to the article I want is not loading”. Then I have to teach them how to really look for the article and other articles. One of the number one question at the periodical desk is how do I get to my article. This link leaves them in the dark and without a useful refined search.
I’m not sure whether this is commenting more on Webfeat or on the QuickStart box. I just tried a couple of searches, with and without a Boolean “and.” I searched “mars pathfinder life” and “mars and pathfinder and life,” and got considerably different results from some databases. (Using an ampersand instead of “and” just returned errors, then only searched on the first term.) For example, omitting the Boolean operator gave me zero hits from all 6 EBSCO databases and 3481 hist from Reference Universe. Inserting “and” between terms gave me results from EBSCO, but omitted Web of Science (doesn’t even appear on the list), and gave me 12,686 hits from Reference Universe.
I also tried selecting Music from the drop-down subject list and searched “Liszt biography” and “Liszt and biography.” Again, very different results (inserting the “and” apparently prevents it from returning any results from the library catalog and Web of Science).
I think Brian Champion makes a good point about what is NOT being searched. The Music search does not include the Music Index or the International Index to Music Periodicals. Apparently they’re not “webfeatable.” From the subject page this is clear; from the QuickStart box, it is not.
Your new search sucks!
Sorry, but you shouldn’t call it beta if it doesn’t even work.
I went several times and in several machines, the worst is looking in Macintosh.
Good luck to make that work.
T. Mean
What’s the use of a search when I get results from every database imaginable, most of which have absolutely no relevance to what I’m doing. I came to your web site looking for books! Please let me search for books ON THE HOMEPAGE, WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK!
Please do not patronize me with your librarian search jargon! I know how to search! I just want to find a book!
Just a couple more notes: I just went looking for “The Joy of Cooking” after hearing about a new edition coming out. Quick search didn’t return the Catalog first, which is what I would have expected. It seems like an exact title match should be presented first… I can see what the folks above are talking about with regards to teaching people to research, but I have to say that while that is a noble goal, it still makes sense to optimize for the common use case: searching for books in the libraries collection. The databases are useful, but when I go to the library homepage I’m looking for something that’s physically owned by the library first. If I’m doing more in depth research, I don’t mind clicking a few more times to zero in.
Webfeat doesn’t work so why are we using it – for anything? I can’t pull up an article even if I wanted it. On quicksearch, I don’t like that I can’t go to the database to refine it without redoing the search again. The search isn’t very user friendly. It is even worse that our “search multiple databases” because you can’t choose which databases to search in.
Quick Start is the greatest idea since jam in a squeeze bottle! But that’s just it… it doesn’t want to work when I try to use it… says “A problem occurred with communicating between the client and the server.”
It obviously needs some work…
But the idea is awesome, I’m sure you will get it worked out.
I’m not seeing results from the library catalog today. They have been there in the past. I hope we aren’t thinking we should take those results out.
I think that a Quick Search Box is completely misleading to our students and should not exist. This is a University not a High School. Students should be doing subject specific research in the appropriate sources. This option displayed so prominently on the home page only misleads the students.
How do users know something like CQ researcher, which is a great background source and is included in the quick search, cannot be cited for most scholarly papers?
I think it is good because often times students do not understand what each specific database will yield after their search. This allows those who want to do a general search to find research for their topics and it also will show which databases bring up certain types of information. “Google Scholar” accomplishes the same purpose
In theory, this is a really good idea. I especially liked how it shows how many hits are obtained from different data bases, though my search makes me wonder exactly how it does the keyword search, because doing two ‘and’ associations brings up entirely different and unexpected results.
For example, I decided to do a quick search on “cheese” which brought up thousands of hits. I was impressed that it worked so fast and that it was a seemingly comprehensive search. But I decided that I needed to narrow down my field, so at the top of the completed result page I decided to add the term “stinky” to narrow my search to the keywords “Stinky” and “cheese”. I was quite surprised when I saw the first hit being something about the horror of losing children and many other unrelated hits that had nothing to do with stinky cheese, but were instead criticisms of children’s literature. Maybe they all referred to children’s literature as “stinky” and/or “cheesy”. In any case, the result was unexpected.
My situation is a little different. I had found a number of articles using a topic search, but I forgot to take down all the journal info when I downloaded the linked text. Now I had 10 articles in PDF format but I didn’t have any reference information besides the author. I tried going back to the topic search to find them again and get the info, but I couldn’t find the info for 2 sources. I did a Quick Start search of just the titles of the articles and I found the info I needed right away.
Thank you, Quick Start, for saving my research paper from the failing grade monster!
Jarom,
I think I know why you got items about children’s literature with your “stinky” and “cheese” search. There is a well-known children’s book titled “The Stinky Cheeseman & Other Fairly Stupid Tales”.
I really don’t like this new search feature. I sure hope that you guys don’t make it a permanent part of the library webpage. There has GOT to be some other way to find things in the library that is better than this. Sorry, but this search thing has got to go.
I’m not sure I’d use it.
Kenneth Ence
Yeah, I tried out the quick search thing. Honestly, my opinion is probably skewed because of my training I have received in working at the library. I think it is basically the same thing as when you go into a subject page and select multiple databases. It just doesn’t seem to give you anything you can really use since the advance searching options are not there. Also, I HATE the searching through multiple databases. Most of the time, it doesn’t work anyway. But I think for a regular patron who has no idea what they are looking for, it could be useful since it returned like a bazillion hits on my subject. I did notice that it didn’t return any information for books though, which that might be helpful in some instances. To be honest though, I would never use it. Sorry.
Amanda Hibbard
I think that Quick Search definitely shortens the process and is a lot easier for patrons to use because they don’t have to search for the search engines. When the databases are down it makes it impossible to search anywhere and so I think what would be more useful is if there was a method to search for when the databases aren’t accessible or are really slow. I think it was easy to use and definitely user friendly because it doesn’t require and searching or “button pushing.” It is a great addition to our resources and makes it easier to show patrons how to search for journals.
Angela Klein
11/6/06
I found Quickstart very helpful. To test it, I researched a couple of real search questions from patrons using it versus the subject page (search all databases) search. The difference was amazing. I found so many more sources through Quickstart. It was a lot quicker too. It is also very convenient because it is right there and it is accessible from the home page I think that it is a very useful and effective way to start your research and find quick information.
Buffy Whetten
I was excited to use the quick search when I got into it, but I wasn’t quite sure what exactly it was going to search. After the results came up. I realized that it was just searching databases, some books, and some encyclopedia references. If no one has a clue where to get started then I think that the quick search might be able to help them. I think that the quick search is exactly like going to the subject page and searching for journal article that way. In that sense I don’t think that the quick search is really a necessary feature toad to the library home page.
Cameron A.K.A “CAM” Tidwell
Quick Start is not so bad when the ‘View’ button works because it takes you directly to the article or the article information without having to go directly to each individual database, you can search multiple databases at once. The main thing I think people have problems with is that it doesn’t tell whether or not the BYU library actually has the article itself. Also I believe that they think that they can look up books in it as well. The short description explaining the it searches for journals would be helpful.
Also the ‘what am I searching’ button is far too small and hard to notice. I also think that it gets kind of confusing when you start using the next step buttons. To be completely honest I only use it when I am feeling lazy and want to do a quick, not very specific search. Which is probably why its cal Quick Start it is quick and it’s a start but not complete!
Suzette Holyoak
11/03/06
1. I did a search which brought up over 100 titles each in various databases and my question is how do I narrow the search from there? and if I cannot then that takes too much time to search through.
2. I like that I can immediately click on full text and/or peer reviewed articles; however, clicking on both still brought up articles in Britannic Online and CQ researcher
3. Primarily I found that searching pulled up a lot of information, but at least it gives me an idea of which database to further search in
4. Its not a “quick” way to find articles, which I think most students would initially think
I received the following feedback from David Day and Janet Bradford regarding the design of the library website. These suggestions are in response to the Quick Start search box, and in their minds, provide a possible alternative.
They recommended changing “Find Articles” to “Guided Subject Searching” or something similar that denotes assistance for subject specific searching. This addresses the problem that the current Find Articles cascade includes more than just articles. Then, they suggested that instead of defaulting to subject pages, the subject list default to subject specific research guides or other resources (like the forthcoming music department site) that will guide a student through the research process. This should be left to the subject librarian to decide; they could leave the default on the resources tab as it is currently or use a research guide or department site.
Also, they suggest changing “Find Books” to the “BYU Library Catalog” and leaving “Find Other Materials” as it is.
With these changes, they believe, Quick Start may be less of an issue. However, they would like to see some verbiage, perhaps in the title of the search, that indicates clearly that the search is general.
In response to the email from the MBA student that Julene read in town meeting, they believe that we should not attempt to compete with Google. Let Google be Google and let us provide the subject-specific, more advanced research tools and assistance that we specialize in.
David and Janet also asserted that we should not rely only on feedback from undergraduates to made decisions about the library and the library website. However, they do feel that we should be doing more with our website to engage students. Projects such as those demonstrated at the last faculty meeting (Allyson’s Camtasia videos, my audio help files for Bio 100) should be pursued. They suggested that the Web Working Group should help subject librarians with these types of projects.
They feel that we should expend our energy to make our research guides easier to find and to make them more snazzy.
David also adds: I would just recommend that you continue to point out that the heading of “Articles” is very misleading. That is one reason or example of why we should not be overly driven by so called student demand. I also suspect that the justificati discipline related bias at its root. Music students, I am quite certain, are non of the heading “Articles” as being a student request must have someot searching mostly for articles.
Useless. I was searching on information about a Brazilian artist and got a bunch of articles about strores opening earlier on Black Friday. This libraries site is the most frustrating site I have ever used. Please make it easier to do reasearch and find sources on topics in all possible locations, be it books, articles, films, ect.
Where is the search box? Why do you have to make it so simple it becomes very hard?
I like the quick search because it doesn’t require students to pick a subject. Picking a subject is sometimes a hindrance to the patron. I find the quick search also gives a larger range of databases than if I were to just go to a subject page of databases.
Quickstart doesn’t seem to be that much of an improvement. It will probably help people who don’t know what they’re doing find lots of sources, but it will be confusing to actually track things down. People have a really hard time tracking down sources as it is. I did like the sources searched in the quickstart, but it would be helpful for books to be part of the search as well.
Sweet! This is an awesome way to search! Straightforward and simpl. Thanks.
I like quick start because it gives patrons a general search. It is good to use when you have no clue where to search. This is good for new patrons.
It might be okay for a general search for books, but it is a distraction to people who don’t know how to search for journals in the first place. it doesn’t give quality search results for articles. I think that the design of the website just needs to be more clear about where a patron can search. I have people that come up to the periodicals desk and have no idea where the library catalog is, because it is under “find books”. it should be a separate link.
I hate the new library site. I get sick of trying to figure out the new sites every 6 months or so. The journal article search gets less useful everytime there is a change. Please make the website more useable rather than easier to create for the designer.
I just found out that the site is even more difficult than I had previously known. I brought up the article finder and realized that it is an oxymoron. The required fields are: article title, journal title, ISSN, volume, issue, date and my favorite of all the start page. Well, I guess pretty much the message is to find the article some other way other than the article finder, since you need to know everything about the article in order find it. Thank you very much.
PLEASE GIVE US BACK OUR OLD LIBRARY PAGE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
Todd,
I’m sorry your frustrated with the site. We are working to make improvements. I’m the new web designer – started about a year ago. I’m not familiar with what the site looked like before that. What specific feature(s) do you wish you could get back from the previous website?
Comments on “Quick”Start search:
1. A very, very common use case is that students simply want to do a library catalog search – **why not provide a library catalog search box on the home page?** this is a core function of the library (access to the library’s own collections).
2. Webfeat is UNACCEPTABLY SLOW. Every search I tried (even from within the library) took more than 2 minutes (after waiting 2 minutes I’d abandon the search). Google searches take milliseconds – it’s faster to use Google Scholar to find an article, and then manually search for exact title matches in several different databases (in separate tabs) then to wait for a webfeat response.
Kudos to the Web Working Group!
I just wanted to thank the web working group for all of their hard work in creating this new tool. While it may not be perfect in its inception, I’m glad that they didn’t let an idea be killed off just because someone didn’t like it.
It sounds like you have done a great job of gaining feedback from everyone who wished to give it and then made the best decision for our patrons, using the authority that is yours as a committee. Please continue in developing new ideas and don’t let yourselves get discouraged by negative feedback.
I was just using the Quick Start box and had a recommendation. As you know, Webfeat sometimes freezes up or moves very slowly when you want to “view” documents. I was wondering if, under the “what am I searching” link, you could actually make the titles live links so that, if someone is experiencing slow delivery, they could go in and enter the database directly. Just a thought. Thanks.
I think that is a great idea, Tom. Thanks.