Oh, I can learn! I spent four solid days in training this week. It was more than a little odd, sitting in a room while someone explained confidentiality of library records, the cornerstones of intellectual freedom, and the Children's Internet Protection Act. I defintely atoned for some sins this week!
But I think I did learn some important things. The most important was that in keyword searches in the Millenium client (the backend, not the OPAC), the default operator is OR. So when I went looking for "medieval warfare", I was getting any record with either term, not records with both. I was thinking, "boy, they bought a lousy product!" I keep thinking I should have figured it out. I mean a keyword search for "cornwell predator" brought up nothing but garbage, when the author or title did bring up hits (but too many for this lazy librarian to want to sift through.) But when I asked others, they told me that Millenium client is lousy for keyword and subject searches--just use the OPAC. But of course I find shifting from OPAC to Millenium another drag...
So the keyword thing is solved, though if I see Millenium at ALA, I may ask them why the default operator is OR. Walt Crawford has made "AND not OR" something of a mantra. When I discovered that was my problem with the keyword searches, I felt a little like Grasshopper in the old Kung Fu show when he fouled up by not following David Carradine's wisdom. Or something--Luke with Yoda? I also managed to bop "and not or" into collection development/intellectual freedom. I tried morphing that into this morning's staff meeting, but I doubt anyone was awed by my profoundity on that one. But I will continue on my little crusades...
The continuing subject search weirdness in Millenium remains inexcusable. You can search on any subject you can dream up, however, if it isn't the accepted LCSH heading, you get a see reference that isn't clickable or anything. It may even tell you see alsos, but if you want to go there, you must leave your current search and type the see also reference into the subject box. Say it's U.S. History with all its magnificent subdivisions, you may have to do quite a bit of typing. And remembering, as the see also reference may have disapeared. What, you weren't thinking you might need to look in more than one of those see references?
It is not exactly easy/intuitive to find the perfect LCSH, I am not the first to note (wink wink nudge nudge). And I am not going to purchase mammoth volumes that will need to be updated just so I can find the right heading. Innovative Interfaces must have put all their development money into the web OPAC, which has clickable tracings <3<3<3
I do want it all--I have to use the client constantly as I am frequently looking to place holds on materials from other libraries. Plus I am still doing the "what do we own on this subject dance" as I wade up to my armpits in collection development lists
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2 comments:
Sounds like you need to have a discussion about the way your library has chosen to configure the system.
You can set Millennium Web OPAC to start keyword searches with adjacency, with AND, or with OR.
You might also want to find out if you're actually on the latest release. Maybe you just need to turn on current features...
We seem to have the settings ok on OR for the Web OPAC, it's the backend client that is driving me batty. Today, I tried ANDing terms in so-called advanced keyword mode, armed with my new knowledge. It was still not happy-making. Whoever thought I could long for DRA Gateway???
No way for me to start asking about Millenium releases right now. I'm still in hiding as a plain ole reference librarian. Which is an interesting way to learn things.
The inhouse webifier is on to me--she asked me to check the version of Windows Media Player (Phituey pituwey) on the staff PCs. Maybe I should have stood on a table last week and shouted "Yo. I speak geek." I'm always in that awkward place of knowing too much not to be a geek, but not enough to be a real geek.
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