[bksvol-discuss] Re: usinf search and Advanced Search
- From: Kelly Pierce <kkellyp@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:45:54 -0500
Has Betsy, Bookshare’s Executive Director, ever explained why she
decided that the default search would be American English only rather
than to search all English-language titles. If so, what was her
response? It would be fair to say that the expectation of a typical
user conducting a default search is a broad and wide search of all
English language titles. It seems rather odd that Bookshare treats
British English like a foreign language when catalog searches at the
world’s largest libraries 100 times the size of Bookshare do not do
this.
Kelly
On 3/21/12, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Here is an interesting characteristic of the advanced search. When I set
> it to British English and leave all other fields blank I get 135
> results. When I set it to American English and leave all other fields
> blank I get 136,114 results. When I set it to all languages and leave
> all other fields blank I get no results. I had thought that when I went
> to the advanced search form and just clicked the search command without
> filling out anything I was getting an exact number of the books in the
> entire collection. However, this discussion tells me that I should have
> examined all the fields before making that assumption. The default
> language is set to American English and so I was getting only an exact
> count of books in American English. As much as I would like to get that
> exact count of all books, however, I must admit that it is only to
> satisfy my curiosity and I have no real use for it. Searching more than
> one language at a time while excluding others can be useful though.
> Other than English the only language I have ever learned well enough to
> communicate in is Spanish and it has been so long since I made use of
> that skill I no longer have that ability. So I really have no need to
> search for anything but English. The problem is that British English and
> American English are treated by the search engine as separate languages
> and as far as I am concerned they are the same language because I can
> understand both quite well. Since the number of books in American
> English are of such a greater number I should search for anything I
> might be looking for there first, but I would not want to exclude
> British English from my search. It would be very good if I could search
> only both of those languages at once and exclude others. Even if
> searching all languages does not work if all other search fields are
> left blank I suppose it does if I search for something specific and I
> suppose I could just skip over results in foreign languages, but it
> would be very nice if I could search both British and American English
> at the same time while excluding the other languages.
>
> On 3/21/2012 3:58 AM, Cindy wrote:
>> Experience has taught me, after now not finding another book that I knew
>> was in the collection, that it's necessary to change the Language to Any;
>> the default seems to be U.S., but that means if the language is British,
>> and the scanner or proofer puts, correctly, U.K. that your search for a
>> book won't get you to the book. So either bookshare instructions should be
>> changed to tell us to put U.S. for all books we scan or proof, or people
>> looking for books should change the language, when looking for a tile, to
>> Any
>>
>>
>> Cindy
>> Join us in celebrating our 10th Anniversary!
>>
>> TinyURL.com/752cyrs
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