If she has ever explained it I missed it. I did not even realize that the default of the search engine was set up that way until this discussion prompted me to examine the language combo box more carefully.
On 3/21/2012 11:45 AM, Kelly Pierce wrote:
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 To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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