Finding Databases
December 18, 2006
Currently, to find a database you must either go to a subject page or go to the databases A-Z page. If you know the exact database you are looking for, you must either go to an appropriate subject page or scroll through approximately 1,400 links on the databases A-Z page before you can access the database.
To make finding specific databases easier and faster, the Web Working Group is proposing the following:
- The ability to browse databases by first letter be added to the front page. When clicking on a letter, only databases that begin with that letter are loaded. This should speed up the finding process significantly.
- The ability to search for a specific database be added to the front page. This would search for both database titles and database descriptions (see the “Database Descriptions” post).
A mock up of this proposal is available for those interested in seeing how this would be implemented.
We hope to make a decision on this by January 2nd so please send us your feedback soon.
In general, I like the database search functionality that searches descriptions as well as database titles. However, implemented as it shows up on the mock up page, it does precisely what many of our patrons find annoying in our catalog – nothing shows up on screen to tell them why they got the results they did. If we’re going to implement this (and I think we should) I think we should highlight the search term or terms whether they appear in the title or the description so patrons know why they got the results.
We like to pound the relevance ranking drum so it might be good if we implemented some of our own relevance ranking rather than simply providing an alphabetic listing of the results.
I love the quick display of only those databases beginning with a letter!